Fear is the Key

"Because there was no one else I could turn to. You're not a killer, you're not even a crook, I don't care what they say you've done, you're not bad." She was a sharp one, all right, her woman's insight or intuition or whatever had taken her far beyond what either Vyland or the general could see. "You must help me — us — you simply must. We — we are in great trouble."

"We?"

"Daddy and I." A pause. "I honestly don't know about my father, I honestly don't. Perhaps he's not in trouble. Maybe he's working with those — those evil men because he wants to. He comes and goes as he pleases. But — but it's so unlike him. Maybe he has to work with them. Oh, I don't know, I don't know. Perhaps they have power over him,

some terrible hold, perhaps-" I caught the glint of fair

hair as she shook her head. "He — well, he was always so good and honourable and straight and — and everything, but

now-

"Easy," I interrupted again. I couldn't keep this deception up much longer, if she hadn't been so scared, so worried, she'd have caught on right away. "Facts, miss, if you please."

I'd left the electric fire burning in my room, the communicating door was open and I was pretty sure it was only a matter of time till she could see enough of my features to see that I wasn't Jablonsky — and that red thatch of mine was a dead giveaway. I turned my back to the glow of the fire.

"How can I begin?" she said. "We seem to have lost all our freedom, or Daddy has. Not in moving around, he's not a prisoner, but we never make decisions for ourselves, or, rather, Daddy makes mine for me and I think he has his made for him too. We're never allowed to be apart for any time. Daddy says I'm to write no letters unless he sees them, make no phone calls, never go anywhere except when that horrible man Gunther is with me. Even when I go to a friend's house, like Judge Mollison's, that creature is there all the time. Daddy says he's had kidnap threats about me recently. I don't believe it and if it were true Simon Kennedy — the chauffeur — is far better than Gunther. I never have a private moment to myself. When I'm out on the rig — the X 13 — I'm no prisoner, I just can't get off, but here my room windows are screwed into the wall and Gunther spends the night in the ante-room watching to see-"

The last three words took a long, long time to come out and trailed off into a shocked silence. In her excitement, her eagerness to unburden herself of aE those things that had been worrying her for weeks, she had come close to me. And now her eyes were adjusted to the darkness. She started to shake. Her right hand began to move up slowly towards her mouth, the arm trembling all the time and jerking like the arm of a marionette, her mouth opened and her eyes widened and kept on widening until I could see white all the way round the pupils. And then she drew a long quavering breath. Prelude to a scream.

But the prelude was all that there was to it. In my business, you don't telegraph your signals. I'd one hand over her mouth and an arm round her before she'd even made up her mind what key to sing in. For several seconds, with surprising strength — or in the circumstances perhaps not so surprising — she struggled furiously, then sagged against me, limp as a shot rabbit. It took me by surprise, I'd thought the day when young ladies had passed out in moments of stress had vanished with the Edwardians. But perhaps I was underestimating the fearsome reputation I appeared to have built up for myself, perhaps I was underestimating the cumulative effect of the shock after a long night of nerving herself to take this last desperate chance, after weeks of endless strain. Whatever the reasons, she wasn't faking, she was out cold. I lifted her across to the bed, then for some obscure reason I had a revulsion of feeling, I couldn't bear to have her lie on that bed where Jablonsky had so recently been murdered, so I carried her through to the bed in my own room.

I've 'had a fairly extensive practical first-aid education, but I didn't know the first thing about bringing young ladies out of swoons. I had a vague feeling that to do anything might be dangerous, a feeling that accorded well enough with my ignorance of what to do, so I came to the conclusion that not only the best thing but the only thing to do was to let her come out of it by herself. But I didn't want her to come out of it unknown to me and start bringing the house down so I sat on the edge of the bed and kept the flash on her face, the beam just below the eyes so as not to dazzle her.