Fear is the Key

"You're no murderer," he said flatly. There was a long pause, then he broke his gaze from me and stared down at the floor.

"Patrolman Donnelly, eh?" I asked.

He nodded without speaking.

"Donnelly is as fit as you are," I said. "Might take him some little time to wash the powder-stains out of his pants, but that's all the damage he suffered."

"Rigged, eh?" he asked softly.

"You've read about me in the papers." I waved a hand at the magazine stand in the corner. I was still front page news and the photograph was even worse than the previous one. "The rest you'll have heard from Mary. Some of what you've heard and read is true, some of it just couldn't be less true.

"My name is John Talbot and I am, as they said in court, a salvage expert. I have been in all the places they mention, except Bombay, and for approximately the periods they mention. But I have never been engaged in any criminal activities of any kind. However, either Vyland or the general or both are very cagey birds indeed. They've sent cables to contacts in Holland, England and Venezuela — the general, of course, has oil interests in all three places — to check on my bona fides. They'll be satisfied. We've spent a long time preparing the groundwork for this."

"How do you know they sent those cables?"

"Every overseas cable out of Marble Springs in the past two months has been vetted. The general — all cables are in his name — uses code, of course. Perfectly legal to do so. There's a little old man from Washington living a block away from the post office. He's a genius with codes: he says the general's is childish. From his point of view."

I got up and started to walk around. The effects of the whisky were vanishing. I felt like a cold wet flounder.

"I had to get in on the inside. Up till now we've been working very much in the dark, but for reasons which would take too long to explain at present we knew that the general would jump at the chance of getting hold of a salvage expert. He did."

"We?" Kennedy still had his reservations about me.

"Friends of mine. Don't worry, Kennedy, I've got all the law in the world behind me. I'm not in this for myself. To make the general take the bait we had to use the general's daughter. She knows nothing of what actually went on. Judge Mollison's pretty friendly with the family, so I got him to invite Mary along for a meal, suggesting that she drop in at the courthouse first while she was waiting for him to clear up the last cases."

"Judge Mollison's in on this?"

"He is. You've a phone there, and a phone book. Want to ring him?"

He shook his head.

"Mollison knows," I continued, "and about a dozen cops. All sworn to secrecy and they know that a word the wrong way and they're looking for a job. The only person outside the law who knows anything about it is the surgeon who is supposed to have operated on Donnelly and then signed his death certificate. He'd a kind of troublesome conscience, but I finally talked him into it."

"All a phoney," he murmured. "Here's one that fell for it."

"Everybody did. They were meant to. Phoney reports from Interpol and Cuba — with the full backing of the police concerned — blank rounds in the first two chambers of Donnelly's Colt, phoney road blocks, phoney chases by the cops, phoney-"

"But — but the bullet in the windscreen?"

"I told her to duck. I put it there myself. Car and empty garage all laid on, and Jablonsky laid on too."

"Mary was telling me about Jablonsky," he said slowly. "Mary ", I noticed, not "Miss Mary". Maybe it meant nothing, maybe it showed the way he habitually thought of her. "'A crooked cop', she said. Just another plant?"

"Just another plant. We've been working on this for over two years. Earlier on we wanted a man who knew the Caribbean backwards. Jablonsky was the man. Born and brought up in Cuba. Two years ago he was a cop, in New York homicide. It was Jablonsky who thought up the idea of rigging false charges against himself. It was smart: it not only accounted for the sudden disappearance of one of the best cops in the country, but it gave him the entree into the wrong kind of society when the need arose. He's been working with me in the Caribbean for the past eighteen months."

"Taking a chance, wasn't he? I mean, Cuba is home from home for half the crooks in the States, and the chances-"

"He was disguised," I said patiently. "Beard, moustache, both home-grown, all his hair dyed, glasses, even his own mother wouldn't have known him."

There was a long silence, then Kennedy put down his glass and looked steadily at me. "What goes on, Talbot?"

"Sorry. You'll have to trust me. The less anyone knows the better. Mollison doesn't know, none of the lawmen know. They've had their orders."

"It's that big?" he asked slowly.