‘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.
To get to the other side of the rig we had to cross the hundred-foot width of the well-deck where I’d talked to Joe Curran, the roustabout foreman, in the early hours of that morning. It was by all odds the longest, wettest and windiest hundred feet that I’d ever walked.
They’d rigged up a couple of wire life-lines clear across to the other side. We could have done with a couple of dozen. The power of that wind was fantastic, it seemed to have redoubled in strength since we had arrived on the rig four hours previously and I knew now that we could expect no boat or helicopter to approach the rig until the storm had passed. We were completely cut off from the outer world.
At half-past two in the afternoon it was dark as twilight and out of the great black wall of cumulo-nimbus that all but surrounded us the wind flung itself upon the X 13, as if it were going to uproot it from its thirteen-leg foundation, topple it and drown it in the depths of the sea. It roared and howled across the deck of the oil rig in a maniacal fury of sound, and even at the distance of a couple of hundred feet we could plainly hear above the deep thunder of the storm the cacophonous obbligato, the screaming satanic music as the great wind whistled and shrieked its falsetto way through the hundreds of steel girders that went to make up the towering structure of the drilling derrick. We had to lean at an angle of almost forty-five degrees against the wind to keep our balance and at the same time hang on grimly to one of the life-lines. If you fell and started rolling along that deck you wouldn’t stop until the wind had pushed you clear over the side: it was as strong as that. It sucked the breath from your lungs and under its knife-edged hurricane lash the rain flailed and stung the exposed skin like an endless storm of tiny lead shot.
Mary led the way across this exposed storm-filled working platform, and right behind her came Kennedy, one hand sliding along the wire, his free arm tightly round the girl in front. At another time I might have been disposed to dwell on the subject of luck and how some people seemed to have all of it, but I had other much more urgent things on my mind. I came close up to him, actually treading on his heels, put my head close to his and shouted above the storm: ‘Any word come through yet?’
He was smart, all right, this chauffeur. He neither broke step nor turned round, but merely shook his head slightly.
‘Damn!’ I said, and meant it. This was awkward. ‘Have you phoned?’
Again the shake of the head. An impatient shake, this time, it looked like, and when I thought about it I couldn’t blame him. Much chance he’d had of either hearing or finding out anything with Larry dancing around flourishing his pistol, probably ever since he had come out to the rig.
‘I’ve got to talk to you, Kennedy.’ I shouted.
He heard me this time too; the nod was almost imperceptible but I caught it.
We reached the other side, passed through a heavy clipped door and at once found ourselves in another world. It wasn’t the sudden quiet, the warmth, the absence of wind and rain that caused the transformation, though those helped: compared to the other side of the rig from which we had just come, this side resembled a sumptuous hotel.
Instead of bleak steel bulkheads there was some form of polythene or Formica panelling painted in pleasing pastel shades. The floor was sheathed in deep sound-absorbing rubber and a strip of carpeting covered the length of the passageway stretching in front of us. Instead of harsh unshaded lighting falling from occasional overhead lamps, there was a warm diffused glow from concealed strip lighting. Doors lined the passage and the one or two that were open looked into rooms as finely furnished as the cabins you might find in the senior officer’s quarters aboard a battleship. Oil drilling might be a tough life, but the drillers obviously believed in doing themselves well in their off-duty hours. To find this comfort, luxury almost, in the Martian metal structure standing miles out to sea was somehow weird and altogether incongruous.
But what pleased me more than all those evidences of comfort was the fact that there were concealed loudspeakers at intervals along the passage. Those were playing music, soft music, but perhaps loud enough for my purpose. When the last of us had passed through the doorway, Kennedy turned and looked at Royale.
‘Where are we going, sir?’ The perfect chauffeur to the end, anyone who called Royale ‘sir’ deserved a medal.
‘The general’s stateroom. Lead the way.’
‘I usually eat in the drillers’ mess, sir,’ Kennedy said stiffly.
‘Not today. Hurry up, now.’
Kennedy took him at his word. Soon he had left most of them ten feet behind – all except me. And I knew I had very little time. I kept my voice low, head bent and talked without looking at him.
‘Can we put a phone call through to land?’
‘No. Not without clearance. One of Vyland’s men is with the switchboard operator. Checks everything, in and out.’
‘See the sheriff?’
‘A deputy. He got the message.’
‘How are they going to let us know if they had any success?’
‘A message. To the general. Saying that you – or a man like you – had been arrested at Jacksonville, travelling north.’
I should have loved to curse out loud but I contented myself with cursing inwardly. Maybe it had been the best they could think up at short notice, but it was weak, with a big chance of failure. The regular switchboard operator might indeed have passed the message on to the general and there would be no chance that I might be in the vicinity at the time: but Vyland’s creature supervising the operator would know the message to be false and wouldn’t bother passing it on, except perhaps hours later, by way of a joke: nor was there any certainty that even then the news would reach my ears. Everything, just everything could fail and men might die because I couldn’t get the news I wanted. It was galling. The frustration I felt, and the chagrin, were as deep as the urgency was desperate.
The music suddenly stopped, but we were rounding a corner which cuts off momentarily from the others, and I took a long chance.
‘The short-wave radio operator. Is he on constant duty?’
Kennedy hesitated. ‘Don’t know. Call-up bell, I think.’
I knew what he meant. Where, for various reasons, a radio post can’t be continuously manned, there is a device that triggers a distant alarm bell when a call comes through on the post’s listening frequency.
‘Can you operate a s
hort-wave transmitter?’ I murmured.
He shook his head.
‘You’ve got to help me. It’s essential that –’
‘Talbot!’
It was Royale’s voice. He’d heard me, I was sure he’d heard me, and this was it, if he’d the slightest suspicion, then I knew Kennedy and I had exchanged our last words and that I was through. But I passed up the guilty starts and breaking of steps in mid-stride, instead I slowed down gradually, looked round mildly and inquiringly. Royale was about eight feet behind and there were no signs of suspicion or hostility in his face. But then there never were. Royale had given up using expressions years ago.
‘Wait here,’ he said curtly. He moved ahead of us, opened a door, peered in, had a good look round, then beckoned. ‘All right. In.’
We went in. The room was big, over twenty feet long, and luxuriously furnished. Red carpet from wall to wall, red drapes framing square rain-blurred windows, green and red chintz-covered armchairs, a cocktail bar lined with red leather-covered stools in one corner, a Formica-topped table to seat eight near the door: in the corner opposite the bar, a curtained-off alcove. The dining-room of the suite – internal doors opened off right-and left-hand walls – where the general roughed it when he came out to the oil rig.
Vyland was there, waiting for us. He seemed to have recovered his equanimity, and I had to admit that that smooth urbane face with its neatly trimmed moustache and distinguished sprinkling of iron-grey at the temples belonged right there in that room.
‘Close the door,’ he said to Larry, then turned to me and nodded towards the curtained alcove. ‘You eat there, Talbot.’
‘Sure,’ I agreed. ‘The hired help. I eat in the kitchen.’
‘You eat there for the same reason that you saw no one on your way through the corridors coming here. Think we want the drilling-rig crew running around shouting that they’ve just seen Talbot, the wanted murderer? Don’t forget they have radios here and the chopper delivers papers every day … I think we might have the steward in now, General, don’t you?’
Fear is the Key Page 19