Fear is the Key

‘Yes. A submarine cable. And a radio from the shore office.’

‘No radio. Too public. The phone – just ask the operator for the X 13, huh?’

She nodded without speaking, and Jablonsky crossed to the phone, asked the motel switchboard girl for the exchange, asked for the X 13 and stood there waiting, whistling in a peculiarly tuneless fashion until a sudden thought occurred to him.

‘How does your father commute between the rig and shore?’

‘Boat or helicopter. Usually helicopter.’

‘What hotel does he stay at when he’s ashore?’

‘Not a hotel. Just an ordinary family house. He’s got a permanent lease on a place about two miles south of Marble Springs.’

Jablonsky nodded and resumed his whistling. His eyes appeared to be gazing at a remote point in the ceiling, but when I moved a foot a couple of experimental inches those eyes were on me instantly. Mary Ruthven had seen both the movement of my foot and the immediate switch of Jablonsky’s glance, and for a fleeting moment her eyes caught mine. There was no sympathy in it, but I stretched my imagination a little and thought I detected a flicker of fellow-feeling. We were in the same boat and it was sinking fast.

The whistling had stopped. I could hear an indistinguishable crackle of sound then Jablonsky said: ‘I want to speak to General Ruthven. Urgently. It’s about – say that again? I see. I see.’

He depressed the receiver and looked at Mary Ruthven.

‘Your father left the X 13 at 4 p.m., and hasn’t returned. They say he won’t be back until they’ve found you. Blood, it would appear, is thicker than oil. Makes things all the easier for me.’ He got through to the new number he’d been given from the oil rig and asked for the general again. He got him almost at once and didn’t waste a word.

‘General Blair Ruthven … I’ve got news for you, General. Good news and bad. I’ve got your daughter here. That’s the good news. The bad news is that it’ll cost you fifty thousand bucks to get her back.’ Jablonsky broke off and listened, spinning the Mauser gently round his forefinger, smiling as always. ‘No, General, I am not John Talbot. But Talbot’s with me right now. I’ve persuaded him that keeping father and daughter apart any longer is downright inhuman. You know Talbot, General, or you know of him. It took a lot of persuading. Fifty thousand bucks’ worth of persuading.’

The smile suddenly vanished from Jablonsky’s face leaving it bleak and cold and hard. The real Jablonsky. His voice, when he spoke, was softer and deeper than ever and gently reproving as to an erring child.

‘General, do you know what? I just heard a funny little click. The sort of funny little click you hear on a line when some smart-alec nosey picks up an extension and starts flapping his ears or when somebody cuts in a tape recorder. I don’t want any eavesdroppers. No records of private conversations. Neither do you. Not if you ever want to see your daughter again … ah, that’s better. And General, don’t get any funny ideas about telling someone to get through to the cops on another line to ask them to trace this call. We’ll be gone from wherever we are in exactly two minutes from now. What’s your answer? Make it quickly, now.’

Another brief pause, then Jablonsky laughed pleasantly.

‘Threatening you, General? Blackmail, General? Kidnapping, General? Don’t be so silly, General. There’s no law that says that a man can’t run away from a vicious killer, is there? Even if that vicious killer happens to have a kidnappee with him. I’ll just walk out and leave them together. Tell me, are you bargaining for your daughter’s life, General? Is she worth no more to you than less than one-fiftieth of one per cent of all you own? Is that all her value to a doting father? She’s listening in to all this, General. I wonder what she might think of you, eh? Willing to sacrifice her life for an old shoe-button – for that’s all fifty thousand bucks is to you … Sure, sure you can speak to her.’ He beckoned to the girl, who ran across the room and snatched the phone from his hand.

‘Daddy? Daddy! … Yes, yes, it’s me, of course it’s me. Oh, Daddy, I never thought –’

‘Right, that’ll do.’ Jablonsky laid his big square brown hand across the mouthpiece and took the phone from her. ‘Satisfied, General Blair? The genuine article, huh?’ There was a short silence, then Jablonsky smiled broadly. ‘Thank you, General Blair. I’m not worrying about any guarantee. The word of General Ruthven has always been guarantee enough.’ He listened a moment, and when he spoke again the sardonic glint in his eyes as he looked at Mary Ruthven gave the lie to the sincerity in his voice. ‘Besides, you know quite well that if you welshed on that money and had a house full of cops, your daughter would never speak to you again … No need to worry about my not coming. There’s every reason why I should. Fifty thousand, to be exact.’

He hung up. ‘On your feet, Talbot. We have an appointment with high society.’

‘Yes.’ I sat where I was. ‘And then you turn me over to the law and collect your fifteen thousand?’

‘Sure. Why not?’

‘I could give you twenty thousand reasons.’

‘Yeah?’ He looked at me speculatively. ‘Got ’em on you?’

‘Don’t be stupid. Give me a week, or perhaps –’

‘Bird-in-the-hand Jablonsky, pal, that’s me. Get going. Looks like being a nice night’s work.’

He cut my bonds and we went out through the garage. Jablonsky had a hand on the girl’s wrist and a gun about thirty inches from my back. I couldn’t see it, but I didn’t have to. I knew it was there.

Night had come. The wind was rising, from the north-west, and it carried with it the wild harsh smell of the sea and a cold slanting rain that splattered loudly against the rustling dripping fronds of the palms and bounced at an angle off the asphalt pavement at our feet. It was less than a hundred yards to where Jablonsky had left his Ford outside the central block of the motel, but that hundred yards made us good and wet. The parking-lot, in that rain, was deserted, but even Jablonsky had backed his car into the darkest corner. He would. He opened both offside doors of the Ford, then went and stood by the rear door.

‘You first, lady. Other side. You’re driving, Talbot.’ He banged my door shut as I got in behind the wheel, slid into the back seat and closed his own door. He let me feel the Mauser, hard, against the back of my neck in case my memory was failing me.

‘Turn south on the highway.’

I managed to press the proper buttons, eased through the deserted motel courtyard and turned right. Jablonsky said to the girl: ‘Your old man’s place is just off the main highway? Right?’

‘Yes.’

‘Any other way of getting there? Back streets? Side roads?’

‘Yes, you can go round the town and –’

‘So. We’ll go straight through. I’m figuring the same way as Talbot figured when he came to the La Contessa – no one will be looking for him within fifty miles of Marble Springs.’

We drove through the town in silence. The roads were almost deserted and there weren’t half a dozen pedestrians to be seen. I caught the red both times at the only two sets of traffic lights in Marble Springs, and both times the Mauser came to rest on the back of my head. By and by we were clear of the town and the rain sheeting down in a torrential cascade that drummed thunderously on the roof and hood of the car. It was like driving under a waterfall and the windscreen-wipers weren’t built for driving under waterfalls. I had to slow down to twenty and even so I was all but blind whenever the headlights of an approaching car spread their whitely-diffused glare over the streaming glass of the windscreen, a blindness which became complete with the spraying wall of water that thudded solidly against screen and offside of the body as the approaching cars swept by with the sibilant whisper of wet rubber on wet roads and a bow-wave that a destroyer captain would have been proud to own.

Mary Ruthven peered into the alternating glare and gloom with her forehead pressed against the windscreen. She probably knew the road well, but she didn’t know it tonight. A north-bound truck growled by at the wrong moment and she almost missed the turn-off.

‘There it is!’ She grabbed my forearm so hard that the Ford skidded for a moment on to the shoulder of the road before I could bring it under control. I caught a glimpse through the rain of a dimly phosphorescent glow on the left and was fifty yards beyond before I stopped. The road was too narrow for a U-turn so I backed and filled until we were heading the other way, crawled up to the illuminated opening in first and turned in slowly. I should have hated to turn in there quickly. As it was, I managed to pull up a few feet short of a six-barred white-painted metal gate that would have stopped a bulldozer.

The gate appeared to be at the end of an almost flat-roofed tunnel. On the left was a seven-foot high white limestone wall, maybe twenty feet long. On the right was a white lodge with an oak door and chintz-covered windows looking out on to the tunnel. Lodge and wall were joined by a shallowly curved roof. I couldn’t see what the roof was made of. I wasn’t interested in it anyway: I was too busy looking at the man who had come through the lodge door even before I had braked to a stop.

He was the dowager’s dream of a chauffeur. He was perfect. He was immaculate. He was a poem in maroon. Even his gleaming riding boots looked maroon. The flaring Bedford cord breeches, the high-buttoned tunic, the gloves perfectly folded under one epaulette, even the peak of the cap were all of the same perfect shade. He took his cap off. His hair wasn’t maroon. It was thick and black and gleaming and parted on the right. He had a smooth brown face and dark eyes set well apart, just like his shoulders. A poem, but no pansy. He was as big as I was, and a whole lot better looking.

Mary Ruthven had the window wound down, and the chauffeur bent to look at her, one sinewy brown hand resting on the edge of the door. When he saw who it was the brown face broke into a wide smile and if the relief and gladness in his eyes weren’t genuine he was the best actor-chauffeur I’d ever known.

‘It is you, Miss Mary.’ The voice was deep, educated and unmistakably English: when you’d two hundred and eighty-five million bucks it didn’t cost but pennies extra to hire a home-grown shepherd to look after your flock of imported Rolls-Royces. English chauffeurs were class. ‘I’m delighted to see you back, ma’am. Are you all right?’

‘I’m delighted to be back, Simon.’ For a brief moment her hand lay over his and squeezed it. She let her breath go in what was half-sigh, half-shudder, and added: ‘I’m all right. How is Daddy?’

‘The general has been worried stiff, Miss Mary. But he’ll be all right now. They told me to expect you. I’ll let them know right away.’ He half-turned, wheeled, craned forward and peered into the back of the car. His body perceptibly stiffened.

‘Yeah, it’s a gun,’ Jablonsky said comfortably from the rear seat. ‘Just holding it, sonny – gets kinda uncomfortable sitting down with a gun in your hip pocket. Haven’t you found that yourself?’ I looked and, sure enough, I could see the slight bulge on the chauffeur’s right hip. ‘Spoils the cut of the Little Lord Fauntleroy suit, don’t it, though?’ Jablonsky went on. ‘And don’t get any funny ideas about using yours. The time for that’s past. Besides, you might hit Talbot. That’s him behind the wheel. Fifteen thousand dollars on the hoof and I want to deliver him in prime condition.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, sir.’ The chauffeur’s face had darkened, his voice was barely civil. ‘I’ll ring the house.’ He turned away, went into the small lobby behind the door, lifted the phone and pressed a button, and as he did so the heavy gate swung open silently, smoothly, of its own accord.

‘All we need now is a moat and a portcullis,’ Jablonsky murmured as we began to move forward. ‘Looks after his 285 million, does the old general. Electrified fences, patrols, dogs, the lot, eh, lady?’

She didn’t answer. We were moving past a big four-car garage attached to the lodge. It was a carport-type garage without doors and I could see I had been right about the Rolls-Royces. There were two of them, one sand-brown and beige, the other gun-metal blue. There was also a Cadillac. That would be for the groceries. Jablonsky was speaking again.

‘Old Fancy-pants back there. The Limey. Where’d you pick that sissy up?’

‘I’d like to see you say that to him without that gun in your hand,’ the girl said quietly. ‘He’s been with us for three years now. Nine months ago three masked men crashed our car with only Kennedy and myself in it. They all carried guns. One’s dead, the other two are still in prison.’

‘A lucky sissy,’ Jablonsky grunted and relapsed into silence.