Fear is the Key (23 page)

For a moment I stood there blinking in the
brightness of the light, but not blinking so fast that
I couldn't see a big burly character sitting at the
radio table whirling round in his seat as the door
opened. And even if I couldn't have seen him I'd
still have heard him a split second later as he sent
his seat toppling backward with a crash and leapt
to his feet, spinning so as to face me, with a speed
so remarkable in so big a man. In so very big a man.
He was taller than I was, a good bit wider, heavier
and younger: he had that blue-jowled, black-eyed,
black-haired very tough face that you occasionally
see in first or second generation Italian-Americans
and if he was a genuine radio-man I was the Queen
of Sheba.

‘What's all the panic about?' I demanded shortly.
It was my best American accent and it was terrible.
‘The boss has a message for you.'

‘What boss?' he asked softly. A build like a
heavy-weight champion and a face to match doesn't
necessarily mean a mind like a moron and this boy
was no moron.

‘Let's have a look at your face, Mac.'

‘What the hell's bitin' you?' I demanded. I turned
down the collar of my coat. ‘Is that what you
want?'

‘Now the hat,' he said quietly.

I took off the hat and flung it in his face just as
I heard him spit out the solitary word ‘Talbot!' I
was into a dive even as I threw the hat and I hit
him fair and square in the middle with the point
of my left shoulder. It was like hitting the trunk
of a tree, but he wasn't as well anchored as a tree
and he went over.

His head and shoulders crashed against the far
wall with a crash that shook the radio shack to
its metal foundations. That should have been that,
but it wasn't, I would have sworn that boy didn't
even blink. He brought up one knee in a vicious
jab that would have been a sad farewell for me
had it landed where it had been intended to land.
It didn't, it caught me on the chest and upper arm,
but even so it had sufficient power behind it to
knock me over on one side and the next moment
we were rolling across the floor together, punching,
kicking, clawing, and gouging. The Marquess
of Queensberry wouldn't have liked it at all.

I was under two big disadvantages. The heavy
oilskins hampered my movements, and although
they helped absorb some of the impact of his
jolting short-arm jabs they also, because of their
constricting effect, robbed my own blows of much
of their power, and while he was obviously more
than willing to turn the entire radio shack into
a shambles of broken furniture and fittings, that
was the last thing I wanted: everything, literally
everything, depended on my keeping that radio
intact. And we both rolled against the radio table
now, myself underneath, where I could have a
good view of one of the legs splintering and caving
in under the combined weight of our bodies
against it.

I wasn't feeling any too good by this time. I
had just the evidence of my own eyes to show
me that this lad was only equipped with arms
and fists just like anyone else and not a couple
of flexible sledge-hammers which was what it felt
like, but the sight of that tottering radio table made
me desperate. A particularly vicious clubbing blow
to the lower ribs didn't make it at all hard for me
to gasp out in pain and fall back limply on the
floor, and while he was taking advantage of my
co-operation and time off to wind up his right
sledge-hammer to drive me through the floor I
brought up my knee and simultaneously chopped
him across the exposed neck with the edge of my
right hand and all the power those hampering
oilskins would permit.

By all the rules he should have gone out like
a light, only he had never read any of the rules.
But I had hurt him, though: the grunt of agony
was as genuine as mine had been faked, and he
was momentarily dazed – just long enough to let
me squirm out from under and roll over and over
until I brought up against the half-open doorway
through which I had entered. I might have nailed
him then, back where we had been, but I wasn't
going to take even the chance of touching the
few splintered pieces of table leg which were all
that kept the transmitter from crashing on to the
steel deck.

He was tough, all right. By the time I was on my
feet he was on his, shaken, but still on his feet.
For a moment I thought he had lost all taste for
the hand to hand stuff, the heavy wooden chair
he had picked up and was bringing whistling over
his shoulder certainly made it seem so, but when I
ducked and heard the chair smash to pieces on the
door jamb behind, it turned out that this was only
his long-range artillery bombardment and that the
assault troops were moving in later. Later, in this
case, was almost right away, but I managed to
avoid his wild flailing bull-rush and whirled round
to meet his next charge.

It never came. He was crouching there, facing
me, teeth showing and his eyes a couple of wicked
slits in his dark Latin face, hands pressed against
the wall behind him ready to help him in his
take-off, when I saw a slender wrist appearing in
the doorway behind him, high up. At the end
of the wrist was a white-gloved hand and gripped
in the hand was a broken chair-leg.

Mary Ruthven hit him as I would have taken
long odds that she would hit him – a hesitant
experimental tap on the head that wouldn't have
dazed a cockroach – but for all that it had the
galvanic effect of an electric shock. He whipped
his head round to locate the source of this fresh
threat and as he did I moved in with two long
steps and hit him with everything I had on the
neck, just below the ear, my knuckles socketing
solidly into the hollow behind the back of his left
jawbone.

One of the most deadly blows in boxing, it could
easily have dislocated his jaw or broken his neck,
and with any normal man might well have done
just that. But he was phenomenally tough. He
crashed back against the steel bulkhead and started
to slide down towards the floor, eyes unfocused
in his head, but even as he slid he made a last
despairing effort to fling himself at me and wrap
his arms around my legs to bring me down. But
his co-ordination, his timing were gone. I had time
to step back as his face came down near my right
foot. I saw no reason why I shouldn't bring the
two into contact and every reason why I should,
so I did.

He lay spread-eagled face downwards on the
floor, silent and still. I was far from silent myself,
my breath was coming in great heaving gasps as
if I had just run a mile, and I hadn't even run a
hundred yards in years. My arms, my hands, my
face were wet with sweat, and it was this that made
me think to get out a handkerchief and rub it all
over my face. But there was no blood there, and I
couldn't feel any bruise. It would have been very
difficult indeed to explain away a black eye or a
bleeding nose to Vyland when I met him later. I
tucked the handkerchief away and looked at the
girl in the doorway. The hand that still held the
chair-leg was trembling slightly, her eyes wide, her
lips pale and what little expression there was on
her face couldn't easily have been misconstrued as
the beginnings of a worshipping admiration.

‘Did you – did you have to use your boot?' she
asked shakily.

‘What did you expect me to use?' I asked savagely.
‘The palm of my hand to smooth his fevered
brow? Be your age, lady. That guy never heard of
little Lord Fauntleroy, he'd have chopped me into
bits and fed me to the barracuda if he'd had half
the chance. Now, just you stand by with your
shillelagh there and clout him if he bats an eyelid
–but hard, this time. Not,' I added hastily, lest she
suspect me of being thought ungracious, ‘that I'm
not grateful for what you've already done.'

I turned round, already a precious minute had
been lost since I had come into the shack, and
found what I was looking for right away. Several
pegs on the walls were festooned with tightly-
rolled coils of wire and flex, material for antenna
leads and radio repairs. I picked a nice flexible
roll of flex and within one minute I had the
radio operator trussed like a chicken ready for
the broiler, passed a slip knot round his neck
and tied the end of it to a cupboard handle. There
could only be some bells or pushes or phones he
might try to reach but he'd soon give up when he
found that all he was doing was strangling himself.
I gave the matter of a gag only a passing thought:
there may be those who know how to draw a
happy median line between suffocating a man and
making a gag loose enough to permit breathing
without at the same time letting the victim be
heard a hundred miles away, but I'm not one of
them. Besides, with that great hurricane howling
outside he could holler away till he got laryngitis
and nobody below deck would ever hear him.

I reached for the only other chair in the shack
and sat down before the radio. It was a standard
aircraft-type transmitter, I knew it well and I knew
how to operate it. I switched on, tuned it on
the wavelength the sheriff had given me through
Kennedy and clamped on a pair of headphones. I
wouldn't have long to wait, I knew that: the police
were keeping a twenty-four hour watch on their
short-wave receivers. Within three seconds of the
end of my call-up sign the headphones crackled in
my ears.

‘Police headquarters. Sheriff Prendergast here.
Please go ahead.'

I threw the transmitter switch from manual to
microphone.

‘Car Nineteen reporting.' The agreed subterfuge
wasn't necessary for identification, every police car
in the county had been warned to stay off the air
and the sheriff knew it could only be me: but
in these days of enthusiastic radio hams airwave
eavesdroppers abound and I wouldn't have put it
past Vyland's organization to maintain a permanent
listening watch on the police wavelengths.
I continued: ‘Suspect answering to description
detained near Ventura crossroads. Shall we bring
him in?'

‘Negative,' the voice crackled. A pause. ‘We've
found our man. Please release suspect.'

I felt as if someone had given me a million dollars.
Almost without realizing it I relaxed heavily
against the back-rest of the chair, the strain of the
keyed-up tension of the past forty-eight hours
had been far greater than I had realized. The
sheer mental relief, the depth of satisfaction I
experienced then surpassed anything I had ever
known.

‘Car Nineteen,' I said again. Even to myself my
voice didn't sound quite steady. ‘Would you repeat
that, please?'

‘Release your suspect,' Prendergast said slowly
and distinctly. ‘We have found our man. Repeat,
we have found –'

The transmitter leapt backwards about two inches,
a great jagged hole appeared in the centre of
the tuning band and the radio shack seemed to
explode about my ears so deafening, so shattering
was the effect of a heavy gun being fired in that
confined space.

I didn't jump more than a couple of feet and after
I came down I got to my feet the normal way, but
slowly, carefully. I didn't want anyone getting too
nervous, and whoever had pulled that stupid trick,
unnecessarily smashing the set and tipping off the
cops that something had gone wrong, was very
nervous indeed. Almost as nervous as I felt as I
turned slowly round and saw who my guest was.

It was Larry and the smoking Colt in his hand
was lined up, as nearly as his shaking hand would
permit, on a spot somewhere between my eyes. It
looked as large as a howitzer. His lank black hair
was plastered wetly over his forehead, and the
coal-black eye behind that wavering barrel was
jerking and burning and crazy as a loon's. One
eye. I couldn't see the other, I couldn't see any
part of him except half his face, his gun-hand and a
left forearm crooked round Mary Ruthven's neck.
The rest of him was completely hidden behind the
girl. I looked at her reproachfully.

‘Fine watchdog you are,' I said mildly.

‘Shut up!' Larry snarled. ‘A cop, eh? A john. A
dirty crawling double-crossing screw!' He called
me several names, all unprintable, his voice a
venomous hiss of hate.

‘There's a young lady here, friend,' I murmured.

‘Lady? A – tramp.' He tightened his grip around
her neck as if it gave him pleasure and I guessed
he had at some time mistakenly tried to make
time with her and the roof had fallen in on him.
‘Thought you were clever, Talbot didn't you? You
thought you knew all the answers, you thought
you had us all fooled, didn't you, cop? But you
didn't have me fooled, Talbot. I've been watching
you, I've been following you every second since
we came out to the rig.' He was jazzed up to the
eyebrows, shaking and jumping as if he had the St
Vitus's Dance, and his voice held all the venomous
and vindictive triumph of the consistently ignored
and derided nonentity who has been proved right
in the end while all those who despise him have
been proved wrong. It was Larry's night to sing,
and he wasn't going to miss out on a single note.
But I had listened to pleasanter voices.

‘Didn't know that I knew that you were in
cahoots with Kennedy, did you, cop?' he went
ranting on. ‘And with this tramp. I was watching
you when you came up from the bathyscaphe ten
minutes ago, I saw that smooth-talking chauffeur
give it to Royale on the head and –'

‘How did you know it was Kennedy?' I interrupted.
‘He was dressed up –'

‘I listened outside the door, mug! I could have
finished you off there and then, but I wanted to
see what you were up to. Think
I
care if Royale
gets sapped down?' He broke off suddenly and
swore as the girl went limp on him. He tried to
hold her up but heroin is no substitute for protein
when it comes to building muscle and even her
slight weight was too much for him. He could have
lowered her gently, but he didn't: he stood back
abruptly and let her collapse heavily on the floor.