Fear is the Key (30 page)

‘Correct. I hold the trumps, Talbot.'

‘Yes,' I said absently. ‘And every day, just on
noon, you sent a coded telegram – in the general's
company code – to your watchdogs who kept an
eye on Mrs Ruthven and Jean. You see, Vyland,
I even know the daughter's name. And if the
coded telegram didn't arrive in twenty-four hours
they had instructions to shift them to another
place, a safer hide-out. Atlanta wasn't too safe,
I'm afraid.'

‘Vyland's face was grey, his hands beginning to
shake again. His voice came as a strained whisper.
‘What are you saying?'

‘I only caught on twenty-four hours ago.' I
replied. ‘We'd been blind – we'd been checking
every outgoing cable from Marble Springs for
weeks, but forgot all about the inland telegrams.
When I did catch on, a message to Judge Mollison
from me – through Kennedy, remember that fight
we had, I slipped it to him then – started off
what must have been the most concentrated and
ruthless man hunt for years. The FBI would stop at
nothing, not since Jablonsky got his, and obviously
they stopped at nothing. Mrs Ruthven and Jean are
safe and well – your friends, Vyland, are under lock
and key and talking their heads off to beat the rap.'
This last bit was guesswork, but I thought my guess
wouldn't be so far out.

‘You're making this up,' Vyland said huskily.
Fear was back in his face and he was clutching at
straws. ‘You've been under guard all day and –'

‘If you were up in the radio shack and could see
the state of that creature of yours who tried to stop
me from putting through a radio call to the sheriff,
you wouldn't say that. It was Kennedy who gave
Royale here his sore head. It was Kennedy who
dragged him inside the room and kept on making
those calculations on the papers on my desk while
I went up to attend to things. You see, I didn't dare
move till they were free. But they are free.'

I looked at the grey and stricken and hunted face
and looked away again. It wasn't a pretty sight.
The time had come to get back, I had found out
all I wanted to know, got all the evidence I would
ever want. I opened up a circuit box, unbuttoned
and repositioned four wires, closed the box again
and pulled the first of the four electro-magnetic
releases for the lead shot ballast.

It worked. Two clouds of grey pellets showered
mistily by the side observation windows and disappeared
into the black mud on the seabed. It
worked, but the lightening of the weight made
no difference, the bathyscaphe didn't budge.

I pulled the second switch, emptied the second
pair of containers: still we remained immovable.
We were sunk pretty deep into that mud, how
deep I didn't know, but this had never happened
before on tests. I sat down to work out if there was
any factor I had forgotten, and now that the strain
was over the pain was back in my shoulder and
mouth and I wasn't thinking so well any more. I
removed the button from between my teeth and
absent-mindedly placed it in a pocket.

‘Was – was that cyanide?' Vyland's face was
still grey.

‘Don't be silly. Antler-horn, best quality.' I rose,
pulled the other two switches simultaneously.
They worked – but again nothing happened. I
looked at Vyland and Royale, and saw reflected
in their faces the fear that was beginning to
touch in my own mind. God, I thought, how
ironic it would be if, after all I had said and
done, we were to die down here. There was
no point in putting off the moment of decision.
I started up both motors, inclined the planes
to the maximum upwards elevation, started up
the tow-rope motor and at the same moment
pressed the switch that jettisoned the two big
electric batteries mounted on the outside of the
scaphe. They fell simultaneously with a thud that
jarred the bathyscaphe, sending up a dark spreading
cloud of black viscous-looking mud: for two
moments of eternity nothing happened, the bolt
was shot, the last hope was gone, when, all in a
second, the scaphe trembled, broke suction aft and
started to rise. I heard Vyland sobbing with relief
and terror.

I switched off the engines and we rose steadily,
smoothly, on an even keel, now and again starting
the tow-rope motor to take in some slack.
We were about a hundred feet up when Royale
spoke.

‘So it was all a plant, Talbot. You never had any
intention of keeping us down there.' His voice was
an evil whisper, the one good side of his face back
to its expressionless normal again.

‘That's it,' I agreed.

‘Why, Talbot?'

‘To find out exactly where the treasure was.
But that was really secondary, I knew it wasn't
far away, a government survey ship could have
found it in a day.'

‘Why, Talbot?' he repeated in the same monotone.

‘Because I had to have evidence. I had to have
evidence to send you both to the chair. Up till
now we had no evidence whatsoever, all along
the way your back trail was divided into a series
of water-tight compartments with locked doors.
Royale locked the doors by killing everybody
and anybody who might talk. Incredibly, there
wasn't a single solitary thing we could pin on
you, there wasn't a person who could split on
you for the sufficient reason that all those who
could were dead. The locked doors. But you
opened them all today. Fear was the key to all
the doors.'

‘You've got no evidence, Talbot,' Royale said.
‘It's only your word against ours – and you won't
live to give your word.'

‘I expected something like that,' I nodded. We
were at a depth of about 250 feet now. ‘Getting
your courage back, Royale, aren't you? But you
don't dare do anything. You can't get this scaphe
back to the rig without me, and you know it.
Besides, I have some concrete evidence. Taped
under my toes is the bullet that killed Jablonsky.'
They exchanged quick startled looks. ‘Shakes you,
doesn't it? I know it all, I even dug Jablonsky's
body up in the kitchen garden. That bullet will
match up with your automatic, Royale. That alone
would send you to the chair.'

‘Give it to me, Talbot. Give it to me now.' The
flat marbled eyes were glistening, his hand sliding
for his gun.

‘Don't be stupid. What are you going to do
with it – throw it out the window? You can't
get rid of it, you know it. And even if you could,
there's something else that you can never get rid
of. The real reason for our trip today, the reason
that means you both die.'

There was something in my tone that got them.
Royale was very still, Vyland still grey, still shaking.
They knew, without knowing why, that the end
had come.

‘The tow-rope,' I said. ‘The wire with the microphone
cable leading back to the speaker in the
rig. You see the microphone switch here, you see
it's at “Off”? I jinxed it, I fixed it this afternoon
so that the microphone was always live. That's
why I made you speak up, made you repeat most
things, that's why I dragged you, Vyland, close up
to me so that you were right against the mike
when you were making your confession. Every
word that's been spoken down here today, every
word we're speaking now is going through live
to that speaker. And every word is being taken
down three times: by tape-recorder, by a civil
stenographer and by a police stenographer from
Miami. I phoned the police on the way back from
the rig this morning, they were aboard the rig
before daylight – which probably accounts for the
field foreman and the petroleum engineer looking
so nervous when we came aboard today. They've
been hidden for twelve hours – but Kennedy knew
where they were. And at lunchtime, Vyland, I gave
Kennedy your secret knock. Cibatti and his men
would have fallen for it, they were bound to. And
it's all over now.'

They said nothing. There was nothing they could
say, at least not yet, not until the full significance
of what I had said had become irrevocably clear
to them.

‘And don't worry about the tape recording,' I
went on. ‘They're not normally acceptable as court
evidence but those will be. Every statement you
made was volunteered by yourselves – think back
and you'll see that: and there'll be at least ten
witnesses inside the caisson who can swear to the
genuineness of the recordings, who will swear
that they could not have come from any source
other than the bathyscaphe. Any prosecutor in
the Union will call for and get a verdict of guilty
without the jury leaving the box. You know what
that means.'

‘So.' Royale had his gun out, he must have had
some crazy notion of trying to snap the tow-rope
and sailing the scaphe off to safety. ‘So we were
all wrong about you, Talbot, so you were smarter
than we were. All right, I admit it. You have what
it takes – but you'll never live to hear the jury
give their verdict. As well hung for a sheep as a
lamb.' His trigger finger began to tighten. ‘So long,
Talbot.'

‘I wouldn't,' I said. ‘Not if I were you. Wouldn't
you like to be able to grip the arm-rests of the
electric chair with
both
hands when the time
comes?'

‘It's no good talking, Talbot, I said –'

‘Look down the barrel,' I advised him. ‘If you
want to blow your hand off, you know what
to do. When you were unconscious this evening
Kennedy used a hammer and punch to jam a lead
cylinder right down the barrel. Do you think I'd
be so crazy as to come down here and you with
a loaded gun in your hand? Don't take my word
for it, Royale – just pull the trigger.'

He squinted down the barrel and his face twisted
into a malevolent mask of hate. He was using up
ten years' quota of expressions in one day – and he
was telegraphing his signals. I knew that gun was
coming before he did. I managed to dodge, the gun
struck the Plexiglas behind me and fell harmlessly
to the floor at my feet.

‘No one tampered with my gun,' Vyland said
hoarsely. He was almost unrecognizable as the
smooth urbane slightly florid top executive he'd
been, his face was haggard now, curiously aged
and covered in a greyish sheen of sweat. ‘Made
a mistake at last, haven't you, Talbot?' His breath
was coming in brief shallow gasps. ‘You're not
going –'

He broke off, hand halfway inside his coat, and
stared down into the muzzle of the heavy Colt
pointing in between his eyes.

‘Where – where did you get that? It – it's Larry's
gun?'

‘Was. You should have searched me, shouldn't
you – not Kennedy? Fools. Sure it's Larry's gun
– that dope-headed junky who claimed he was
your son.' I looked steadily at him, I didn't want
any gunfire 150 feet below sea level. I didn't
know what might happen. ‘I took it off him this
evening, Vyland, just about an hour ago. Just
before I killed him.'

‘Just – just before –?'

‘Just before I killed him. I broke his neck.'

With something between a sob and a moan
Vyland flung himself at me across the width of the
chamber. But his reactions were slow, his movements
even slower and he collapsed soundlessly
to the floor as the barrel of Larry's Colt caught
him across the temple.

‘Tie him up,' I said to Royale. There was plenty
of spare flex lying around and Royale wasn't fool
enough to get tough about it. He tied him up,
while I was blowing gasoline through a valve and
slowing our ascent about 120 feet, and just as he
finished and before he could straighten I let him
have it behind the ear with the butt of Larry's
Colt. If ever there had been a time for playing it
like a gentleman, that time was long gone, I was
now so weak, so lost in that flooding sea of pain,
that I knew it would be impossible for me to bring
that scaphe back to the rig and watch Royale at the
same time. I doubted whether I could even make
it at all.

I made it, but only just. I remember easing the
hatch of the bathyscaphe up inside the caisson,
asking through the mike, in a slurred stumbling
voice that wasn't mine, for the annular rubber
ring to be inflated and then lurching across to
twist open the handle of the entrance door. I
don't remember any more. I am told they found
the three of us lying unconscious on the floor of
the bathyscaphe.

I walked down the court-house steps out into the
still, warm October sunshine. They'd just sentenced
Royale to death and everybody knew there
would be no appeal, no reversal of the decision.
The jury, as I had prophesied, had convicted without
leaving the box. The trial had lasted only one
day and during the entire day Royale had sat as
though carved from stone, his eyes fixed on the
same spot for hour after interminable hour. That
spot had been me. Those blank, flat, marbled eyes
had been as expressionless as ever, they hadn't
even altered a fraction when the prosecution
had played the recording of Royale begging for
his life on his hands and knees in the scaphe
at the bottom of the sea, they hadn't altered
when the death sentence had come but for all
the lack of expression a blind man could have
read his message. ‘Eternity's a long time, Talbot,'
his eyes had said. ‘Eternity is forever. But I'll be
waiting.'

Let him wait: eternity was too long for me to
worry about.

They hadn't sentenced Vyland, for they never
even had the chance to try him. On the way up
the caisson from the bathyscaphe, 170 steps from
the bottom, Vyland had simply let go his grip
on the ladder and leaned back into space: he
hadn't even screamed on the long way down.

I passed the general and his wife on the steps.
I had met Mrs Ruthven for the first time on my
first day out of hospital, which had been yesterday.
She had been very charming and gracious and endlessly
grateful. They had offered me everything,
from a job at the top of the tree in Ruthven's oil
companies to enough money to last any man half a
dozen lifetimes, but I just smiled and thanked them
and turned them all down. There was nothing in
them for me, all the fancy directorships and money
in the world couldn't buy me back the days that
were gone. And money couldn't buy the only thing
I wanted out of the world today.

Mary Ruthven was standing on the sidewalk
beside her father's sand and beige Rolls-Royce.
She was dressed in a plain white, simple one-piece
dress that couldn't have cost more than a thousand
bucks, her braided wheat-coloured hair was piled
high on her head and I had never seen her looking
so lovely. Behind her was Kennedy. For the first
time I saw him dressed in a lounge suit, dark
blue and immaculately cut, and when you saw
him like that it was impossible to imagine him
any other way. His chauffeuring days were over:
the general knew how much the Ruthven family
owed him and you couldn't pay a debt like that
with chauffeur's wages. I wished him all the luck
in the world: he was a nice guy.

I halted at the foot of the steps. A little wind was
blowing in from the blue sparkling shimmer that
was the Gulf of Mexico, sending tiny little dust
devils and small pieces of paper dancing across
the street.

Mary saw me, hesitated a moment, then came
across the sidewalk to where I was standing. Her
eyes seemed dark and curiously blurred but maybe
I was imagining it. She murmured something, I
couldn't make out what it was, then suddenly,
careful not to hurt my left arm still in its sling, she
put her two arms round my neck, pulled down my
head and kissed me. Next moment she was gone,
making her way back to the Rolls like a person
who couldn't see too well. Kennedy looked at her
coming towards him, then lifted his eyes to mine,
his face still and empty of all expression. I smiled
at him and he smiled back. A nice guy.

I walked down the street, along towards the
shore, and turned into a bar. I hadn't intended
to, I didn't really need a drink, but the bar was
there so I went in anyway. I had a couple of
drinks, double Scotches, but it was just a waste
of good liquor; I left and made my way down to
a bench by the shore.

An hour, two hours, I don't know how long I
sat there. The sun sank down close to the rim of
the ocean, the sea and the sky turned to orange
and gold, and I could see, faintly on the horizon
and weirdly silhouetted against this flaming backdrop,
the massively grotesque angularity of the oil
rig X 13.

X 13. I suppose that would always be a part of
me now, that and the broken-winged DC that lay
580 yards to its south-west, buried under 480 feet
of water. For better or for worse, it would always
be part of me. For worse, I thought, for worse. It
was all over and done with and empty now and it
meant nothing, for that was all that was left.

The sun was on the rim of the sea now and
the western world a great red flame, a flame that
would soon be extinguished and vanish as if it had
never been. And so it had been with my red rose,
before it had turned to white.

The sun was gone and the night rushed across
the sea. With the dark came the cold so I rose stiffly
to my feet and walked back to the hotel.