Fear is the Key

I pulled off the bandanna — in the deepening dusk that white gleam on my head was more conspicuous than my red hair — and went on: "Last place they'll ever think to find me. I'm going to spend the night there, maybe several nights until I find me a boat out. So are you." I ignored the involuntary exclamation. "That's the phone call I made back at the drug-store. I asked if Room 14 was vacant, they said yes, so I said I'd take it, friends who'd passed through had recommended it as having the nicest view in the motel. In point of fact it has the nicest view. It's also the most private room, at the seaward end of a long block, it's right beside the closet where they put my case away when the cops pinched me and it has a nice private little garage where I can stow this machine away and no one will ever ask a question."

A mile passed, two miles, three and -she said nothing. She'd put her green blouse back on, but it was a lacy scrap of nothing, she'd got just as wet as I had when I was trying to fix the roof, and she was having repeated bouts of shivering. The rain had made the air cool. We were approaching the outskirts of Marble Springs when she spoke.

"You can't do it. How can you? You've got to check in or sign a book or pick up keys or have to go to the restaurant. You can't just-"

"Yes, I can. I asked them to have the place opened up ready for us, keys in the garage and room doors, and that we'd check in later: I said we'd come a long way since dawn, that we were bushed and that we'd appreciate room service for meals and a little privacy." I cleared my throat. "I told the receptionist we were a honeymoon couple. She seemed to understand our request for privacy."

We were there before she could find an answer. I turned in through an ornate lilac-painted gateway and drew up near the reception hallway in the central block, parking the car directly under a powerful floodlarnp which threw such black shadows that my red hair would be all but invisible under the car roof. Over by the entrance stood a negro dressed in a lilac, blue and gold-buttoned uniform that had been designed by a colour-blind man wearing smoked glasses. I called him across.

"Room 14?" I asked. "Which way, please?"

"Mr. Brooks?" I nodded, and he went on: "I've left all the keys ready. Down this way."

"Thank you." I looked at him. Grey and bent and thin and the faded old eyes the clouded mirrors of a thousand sorrows and defeats. "What's your name?"

"Charles, sir."

"I want some whisky, Charles." I passed money across. "Scotch, not bourbon. And some brandy. Can you?"

"Right away, sir."

"Thanks." I let in the gear, drove down the block to No. 14. It was at the end of a narrow peninsula between the gulf to the left and a kidney-shaped swimming pool to the right. The garage door was open and I drove straight in, switched off the car lights, closed the sliding door in the near-darkness, then switched on the overhead light.

Fear is the Key 41

At the inner end of the left hand wall a single door led off the garage. We went through this, into a kitchenette, neat, hygienic and superbly equipped if all you wanted was a cup of coffee and had all night to make it. A door led off this into the bed-sitting-room. Lilac carpet, lilac drapes, lilac bedspread, lilac lamp-shades, lilac seat-covers, the same excruciating motif wherever you looked. Somebody had liked lilac. Two doors off this room: to the left, let into the same wall as the kitchen door, the door to the bathroom: at the far end, the door leading into the corridor.

I was in this corridor within ten seconds of arriving in the room, dragging the girl after me. The closet was no more than six feet away, unlocked, and my bag still where it had been left. I carried it back to the room, unlocked it and was about to start throwing some stuff on the bed when a knock came to the door.

"That will be Charles," I murmured. "Open the door, stand well back, take the bottles, tell him to keep the change. Don't try to whisper, make signs or any clever little jumps out into the middle of the corridor. I'll be watching you from the crack of the bathroom door and my gun will be lined up on your back."

She didn't try any of those things. I think she was too cold, miserable and exhausted by the accumulated tension of the day to try anything. The old man handed over the bottles, took the change with a surprised murmur of thanks and closed the door softly behind him.

"You're frozen and shivering," I said abruptly. "I don't want my insurance policy to go catching pneumonia." I fetched a couple of glasses. "Some brandy, Miss Ruthven, then a hot bath. Maybe you'll find something dry in my case."

"You're very kind," she said bitterly. "But I'll take the brandy."

"No bath, huh?"

"No." A hesitant pause, a glint in her eye more imagined than seen, and I knew I'd been mistaken in imagining her to be too worn out to try anything. "Yes, that too."