The Man Who Stayed Alive

by John Creasey

  In the centre was the Information Bureau.

  He walked towards this, and was dwarfed. Every footstep sounded impudent, every human being looked insignificant — and there were masses of them, coming out of the doors which led to the platforms, which were hidden away behind dark doors.

  ‘Help you ?’ a youth asked at the desk.

  ‘Can you give me the times of trains to Scarsdale?’ Whit-taker spoke casually, in an accent that would pass for American or Canadian; wasn’t at all ‘English’.

  ‘Sure. Lower level, every half-hour on the hour and half-hour. You can’t miss it,’

  Tine,’ said Whittaker. He moved away briskly towards a sign which directed him towards the lower level. He didn’t go down, though, but along the concourse again and up to street level. He had been in the man-made caverns of the station for twenty minutes, but it seemed much hotter when he appeared above ground again. Everyone seemed in a hurry, and there was more hooting traffic and more jostling pedestrians; the restaurants were crowded. Shops were open or opening. He went briskly to Broadway, and turned right; and a few blocks along, reached a shop with a huge window, and the slogan: good clothes for men. It was open. He didn’t feel that anyone was on his heels yet, but they might start sooner than he expected, and he hadn’t a lot of time.

  A middle-aged man came up.

  ‘Help you, sir?’

  ‘Do you have a linen coat ?’ asked Whittaker, in the newly-acquired voice. ‘One that will fit me?’

  ‘There isn’t a man in New York we can’t fit,’ the man assured him. ‘This way, sir, please.’

  In two minutes Whittaker was looking at his reflection in a biscuit-coloured linen coat which was far too big round the waist and too long in the sleeves.

  ‘You want to try our medium size?’ The clerk’s eyes were doing all the smiling.

  Whittaker was easily satisfied; as satisfied, too, that this man didn’t dream he was talking to an Englishman; that was important — vital.

  Whittaker went out, carrying a box branded good clothes for men, and returned to Grand Central. The concourse and the great hall were swarming with people, and everyone looked hot. He had some coffee and bacon and eggs, sitting at a bar. Then he went to the nearest public lockers; those empty had a key in the lock as usual; for fifty cents he could get the key out, and use a locker. He chose ‘a locker, put his parcel and other oddments inside, slipped the key into his pocket, then went down to the Scarsdale booking office and on to the platform. Streams of people were coming off the arrival trains; the platform he went on was empty, only a dozen or so passengers were sitting in the train itself. He settled down, with the New York Herald Tribune and the Mirror, and waited; on the dot of ten o’clock the train drew out of the station.

  For a while it seemed as if it were going through a tunnel which had no end, but after ten minutes or so, daylight came.

  Soon New York lay behind him.

  He skimmed through the newspapers, but didn’t think much about what he read. He kept seeing Bob Gann. He was going to see Bob Gann’s image for a long time.

  And the man who had killed Gann had been lying in wait for him.

  Why?

  The train stopped, the guard called out, amiably, and made a special journey to tell Whittaker the next stop was Scarsdale. The guard would remember him, but only vaguely.

  ‘Thanks a lot,’ Whittaker said, and stood up.

  ‘You’re welcome,’ the guard said.

  You’re welcome——

  Several taxis, more subdued in colour than in the city, were waiting outside the station. The suburb looked small, pleasant, tree-filled and hot; everyone looked hot, and Whittaker had seldom felt hotter. He went to the first taxi; it wasn’t here that he needed to cover his traces, but after he’d got back to New York. The one thing he took for granted was that he would not run into any trouble until he had seen Mrs. Gann, and told her the ugly truth.

  Two things drove him forward

  He had an odd quirk of feeling that he owed it to Gann that he couldn’t let anyone else break the news coldly or brutally or even kindly but without understanding. That would have been enough in itself, but there was another thing, no more than a possibility: that Mrs. Gann might have some idea why Gann had been killed.

  Crazy?

  The hundredth chance was the only one that mattered every time it came off.

  ‘Grantley Avenue, sir,’ said the middle-aged cabby. He wore a linen suit, the same colour as Whittaker’s coat except where honest toil had darkened it, and a peaked cap. ‘You know the house?’

  ‘Number Forty-five.’

  ‘Oh, sure,’ said the cabby. ‘Bob Gann’s place.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Have you there in ten minutes,’ the cabby promised, and started off as if he had all day to spare; but the breeze coming in at the windows had a semblance of coolness. They drove past tall, dark blocks of apartment buildings, then over a bridge, then off the main road. Suddenly, they were lost in trees and in coolness. The trees grew tall and stately, the small leaves had an almost transparent greenness, and they not only cooled the air, they softened the outlines of the houses on either side. The road twisted and turned, until a signpost, pointing up a steep hill, read: grantley avenue.

  ‘There it is, that fourth house on your right,’ said the cabby. ‘See that girl playing with the doll? That’s Mimi Gann. Sure is a sweet kid.’

  Whittaker felt his jaws tighten.

  ‘Young Bob’s at school,’ the cabby said. ‘Spitting image of his father, young Bob.’

  Whittaker didn’t speak.

  ‘Well, here you are,’ the cabby said.

  The girl, who was as fair as Gann had been dark, looked up from the pram and two dolls with a wide-eyed curiosity. Her eyes were blue. She just wanted to know who the stranger was, why he had come here. She didn’t move but watched him. He had to force a smile, because he was realising exactly what he had come into; the kind of disaster he was bringing here. His feet dragged.

  He reached the front door: it stood open. He heard the whirr of a vacuum cleaner. Somehow, the normality of that, and the bright eyes of the child, made him feel far worse. He raised a hand to press the bell, when he was aware of the child behind him, at the nearest grassy spot.

  ‘Just go right in,’ she said, ‘I’ll tell my mummy.’

  He swung round. ‘Will you? That’s fine!’ His smile was a little easier as he watched her turn and rush towards the back of the house. He wondered why she didn’t go straight through the front doorway; but it didn’t matter.

  He stepped over the threshold of what looked like a well-furnished home. He heard the whine of the taxi as it went up the steep road leading from here. He took another step forward, and a man behind the door said:

  ‘Stop where you are, and don’t move.’

  CHAPTER VII

  BOB GANN’S WIFE

  The man’s voice was low-pitched and hard with the kind of hardness which meant business. Whittaker stopped quite still. His hands were empty and by his sides; he left them there, where the man behind him could see them. If the man were armed, and if he raised his hand . . .

  Stillness froze him;

  The vacuum cleaner whirred, and above the sound there came the child’s voice, shrilly.

  ‘Mummy, there’s a man!’

  There were other sounds, perhaps other voices, but the vacuum cleaner didn’t stop. Then a door closed, and the sound was cut off, although it lingered in the distance. All that had taken a few seconds, and they were seconds while icy water seemed to trickle down Whittaker’s spine. He kept looking about him. This was a long, narrow hall. Two arched doorways, without doors, led off this, one into a big sunlit room, another into a passage. On one side of the passage was a staircase, painted white, with a half landing.

  Near Whittaker, and close to the passage, was a mirror. In the room beyond as well as in this hall, there were a grand piano, pictures, comfortable chairs, expensive ornaments
and a thick carpet.

  If he moved his head a little he might be able to see his own reflection in the mirror and that of the man behind him.

  One shot would be plenty.

  The man said, ‘Stay right where you are; let me get a look at you.’ He moved slowly. The vacuum cleaner still hummed.

  Whittaker saw that he had a gun with a silencer: and was looking down at a photograph he held in his hand.

  His? Whittaker’s?

  ‘Okay,’ the man said. ‘You’re the guy Pirran saw in London, you’ve come to the right place.’ There was the lash of menace in his words. ‘What did Pirran tell you ?’

  Whittaker didn’t try to speak.

  He heard the hissing intake of breath, and knew fear greater than he had ever known it. He heard the click; the kind of sound that a trigger might make being squeezed. He kept absolutely still, and his teeth seemed to grind into one another. Then the shot came. The subdued zutt of sound was vicious. He felt the wind past his face, saw the wood of the staircase splinter as the bullet bit deep.

  ‘Don’t hold out on me, Whittaker,’ the man said. ‘We haven’t much time. What did Pirran tell you ?’

  Whittaker said heavily, ‘He wanted a bodyguard; he was nervous.’

  That’s right, he was nervous,’ the gunman said. ‘Did he tell you why?’

  ‘He’d been attacked——’

  The man said roughly: ‘Stop stalling! Did Pirran tell you why he was on the spot?’

  The truthful answer was ‘No.’

  ‘No,’ Whittaker said.

  ‘Did he tell Gann?’

  ‘If so, Gann didn’t tell me.’

  ‘Whittaker, I’ve warned you plenty,’ said the man with the gun. ‘Maybe you don’t have to answer. Okay — you don’t have to live. See that hole in the wall ? Imagine what it would look like in your head!’

  Whittaker said: ‘Pirran wanted a private eye. That’s me. He asked the Embassy in London for protection. They gave Gann the job. No one told me anything more than I’ve told you.’

  ‘If you’re lying——’

  ‘I don’t lie when a gun’s at my back,’ Whittaker said heavily.

  ‘So you don’t?’ The other man seemed almost to be stalling; he paused, and then said abruptly, ‘You see that packet Pirran had ?’

  It was easy to sound surprised.

  ‘Packet? What pack——?’ Whittaker stopped.

  He could see the other’s face in the mirror, and didn’t like what he saw. A preview of death. He’d been near it on the Queen B, but not so desperately close.

  He said: ‘Okay! Shoot to kill friend. But why pick on me? Give me the reason, before you squeeze the trigger.’ He spoke to try to gain time — time even to think in, to seek some way of winning even a chance of life.

  The man said, ‘You’ve seen too much, and maybe Pirran talked, so . . .’

  That would be an answer. Whoever wanted Pirran dead knew that Pirran had hired help, believed Pirran might have talked of some vital thing. He hadn’t to Whittaker; but he could so easily have done.

  So Gann had died.

  He was to die.

  Whittaker said in a choky voice, ‘Give me two minutes, give me——’

  He broke off, and leapt desperately to one side. As he moved, he dug into his pocket for his gun, but knew that he hadn’t a real chance.

  The distance between them was six feet; there were several bullets left in the other’s gun, and there was a killer-look in his eyes. Whittaker hadn’t time even to touch his weapon, hardly time to pray; just to know that death was coming to him as it had come to Gann. A split second of understanding and of fear, and . . .

  A window in the big room crashed in.

  The noise was shattering, startling him out of the grip of his own terror. It made the man with the gun swing round. Through the arched doorway they saw the smashed window, billowing curtain, the glass which looked like a huge star, and a woman standing on the other side of the window. She had a mop in her hand, the mop with which she had smashed the window. She stood as if transfixed, although in the distance a vacuum cleaner whined.

  The gunman’s hand raised, the gun covered the woman in a split second.

  ‘Friend,’ said Whittaker.

  He made the word crackle, and he made the gunman turn. He had his own gun out, now, and fired and struck the man’s wrist. It happened as quickly as that. Roar — flash — whine — and gasp. Shot for shot, a tug at his shoulder, and a splotch of red on the other man’s wrist. The gun with the silencer dropped, clattering.

  For a moment, it was like a tableau.

  Then the door which had been closed, opened, and Mimi Gann came running in. Only the crack of the shot would have brought her. She came hurrying in, and must have seen the shattered wrist and the blood, because she stopped close to Whittaker, with her hands raised, and her blue eyes so wide open and rounded that they just weren’t true.

  Then:

  ‘Mimi!’ screamed the woman at the window. ‘Mimi!’

  The man who held up Whittaker was moving, now, racing towards the passage. Whittaker could shoot and bring him down, and risk hurting the child.

  ‘Mimi!’ cried the woman.

  The man rushed along the passage. Whittaker tried to get past the child, but in her terror she dodged the way he moved, and he almost fell in trying to avoid her. He put his hands down, to grasp and to set her on one side, but as he did so she began to scream, as if the terror had only now come to the surface. And she kicked as she screamed.

  ‘Oh, Mimi, Mimi!’ The woman’s voice was further away, and she came running; Whittaker could hear her footsteps, and the footsteps of the man. The screaming child was a barrier more solid than any wall or door; he couldn’t leave the child until the woman had arrived.

  The woman came from the passage.

  She didn’t speak, but the burning dread in her eyes cooled when she saw that the child was not hurt. § he swooped forward and downwards, with a kind of graceful pride and lifted Mimi, first high and then very close. She didn’t look at Whittaker, only at the child.

  Whittaker thrust his way past her. The passage led to the kitchen and the back door. From there, he saw the drive of the house next door, and a gleaming blue car, which began to move into the road. He couldn’t see who was at the wheel, but he could guess. The engine was purring. There were trees between him and the car, and if he fired there was no way of being sure that he would stop the car or hit the driver. He couldn’t see the number. The car gathered speed and spurted up the steep road. So Whittaker stood and waited until it went out of sight, and the sky-blue colour faded from among the trees.

  Now, all was quiet.

  A hint of a breeze murmured among the delicate leaves of the beech and birch trees. A long way off, a car engine sounded. That was all. The next-door house was fifty yards or more away, and the windows seemed closed; and he could not see any other house nearby. This was a little clearing in a wood, with houses dotted about it, quietness which the shots inside Number Forty-five had obviously not seriously disturbed.

  No one came.

  Inside, the child was sobbing.

  Whittaker went in, through the spotless kitchen, a kitchen which any woman would envy, which was still almost a dream to most English housewives. Chromium gleamed, tiles sparkled, a refrigerator nearly as tall as the door purred with a smug, machine-made satisfaction. The child’s crying was muffled, as if she were pressed tightly against her mother. It was as if she had some premonition of the blow which was coming to them both.

  Whittaker slowed down as he reached the living-room.

  All thought of the man who had escaped, and all thought of the fact that a man had been waiting for him, here, went out of his mind.

  There was mother and child.

  Mrs. Gann was standing by the side of a huge armchair. The child stood on it, tight against her mother, whose arms encompassed her, as if only they could offer true protection. The muffled sobbing kept on and on, with Mim
i’s head buried in her mother’s breast, for her comfort, her solace, her desperately needed reassurance.

  The sobbing seemed to quieten.

  Sensing that she was being watched, the woman turned her head.

  She was tall. She had a queenliness which nothing could take away — a kind of magnificence. Her face had pallor and her eyes a false brightness, but she had the striking looks which her photograph had shown, and of which Gann had seemed so proud. Her hair, braided and worn like a crown of spun gold, was like ripe corn, and her eyes were grey like the light of a clear dawn. It didn’t matter that she had stood outside the window, face set in horror, or that she had come running and screaming because of her fear. She stood there, like the mother of all creation, pressing her child against her with desperation which told of longing. It told of other things, too: and as she looked at Whittaker, her eyes betrayed fear.

  The child was much quieter.

  Whittaker stood waiting, huge and still and silent. He had to tell this woman that her man was dead. He wished he were a million miles away, but he stood here with the task close by him, and one he knew that he could not shirk. Nor could he speak, until the child had gone and he was alone with her mother.

  ‘He’s gone,’ he said, and meant the gunman. Gann’s wife realised that, although the words had the bitterness of irony for him. ‘May I have a few minutes alone with you?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Mrs. Gann. ‘Soon.’ She seemed to hug the child more closely for a moment, then eased her away. A pale, tear-lined face was ridged by the pattern of her mother’s dress of lace at the throat; rich, white lace. ‘Mimi,’ Mrs. Gann said, ‘You’ll soon feel better, the mean man has gone away.’

  ‘Has he — properly gone?’ ‘Yes, Mimi. Hasn’t he, Mr.

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ Whittaker said. ‘I chased him, and he drove off in the car which was parked next door.’

  That’s right,’ said Mrs. Gann.

  ‘I saw him come in the car,’ Mimi announced. ‘He went to the house next door first, Mummy.’ She was looking with sharper interest at Whittaker, scrutinising him as if trying to assure herself that the big man with the strange voice was in fact a friend — and telling the truth.