Fear is the Key

I nodded slowly. He was on safe ground as far as he knew his ground; if I'd been doped I'd have only the haziest recollection of what had happened immediately before I'd passed out. I scowled at him and nodded at the handcuffs: "Unlock this damn' thing, will you?"

"Why only one cuff?" Royale repeated gently.

"What does it matter if it's one cuff or twenty," I said irritably. "I can't remember. I seem to think Jablonsky shoved me in here in a great hurry and could only find one. I think perhaps he didn't feel too good either." I buried my face in my hands and drew them down hard as if to clear my head and eyes. Between my fingers I glimpsed Royale's slow nod of understanding and I knew I had it made: it was exactly what Jablonsky would have done; he'd have felt something coming over him and rushed in to secure me before he collapsed.

The cuff was unlocked and on the way through Jablonsky's room I glanced casually at the table. The whisky bottle was still there. Empty. Royale — or Vyland — didn't miss much.

We went out into the passage with Royale leading and Valentino bringing up the rear. I shortened my step abruptly and Valentino dug his gun into the small of my back. Nothing Valentino would do would ever be gently, but, for him, it was a comparatively gentle prod and my sharp exclamation of pain might have been justified if it had been about ten times as hard. I stopped in my tracks, Valentino bumped into me and Royale swung round. He'd done his conjuring act again and his deadly little toy gun was sitting snugly in the palm of his hand.

"What gives?" he asked coldly. No inflection, not the slightest raising of the pitch of voice. I hoped I lived to see the day when Royale was good and worried.

"This gives," I said tightly. "Keep your trained ape out of my hair, Royale, or I'll take him apart. Gun or no guns."

"Lay off him, Gunther," Royale said quietly.

"Jeez, boss, I didn't hardly touch him." Discounting the anthropoid brow, broken nose, pock-marks and scars, there wasn't much room left on Valentino's face for the shift and play of expression, but what little area remained appeared to indicate astonishment and a sharp sense of injustice. "I just gave him a little tap-"

"Sure, I know." Royale had already turned and was on his way. "Just lay off him."

Royale reached the head of the stairs first and was half a dozen steps down by the time I got there. Again I slowed abruptly, again Valentino bumped into me. I swung round, chopped the side of my hand against his gun-wrist and knocked the automatic to the ground. Valentino dived to pick it up with his left hand then roared in anguish as the heel of my right shoe stamped down and crushed his fingers between leather and metal. I didn't hear any bones break, but nothing so drastic was necessary — with both his hands out of commission Mary Ruthven was going to need a new bodyguard.

I made no attempt to stoop and pick up the gun. I made no attempt to move. I could hear Royale coming slowly up the stairs.

"Move well back from that gun," he ordered. "Both of you."

We moved. Royale picked up the gun, stood to one side and waved me down the stairs in front of him. I couldn't tell what he was thinking; for all the expression on his face he might just as well have been watching a leaf falling. He said nothing more, he didn't even bother to glance at Valentino's hand.

They were waiting for us in the library, the general, Vyland and Larry the junky. The general's expression, as usual, was hidden behind moustache and beard but there was a tinge of blood to his eyes and he seemed greyer than thirty-six hours ago: maybe it was just my imagination, everything looked bad to me that morning. Vyland was urbane and polished and smiling and tough as ever, freshly shaven, eyes clear, dressed in a beautifully cut charcoal-grey suit, white soft shirt and red tie. He was a dream. Larry was just Larry, white-faced, with the junky's staring eyes, pacing up and down behind the desk. But he didn't look quite so jerky as usual; he, too, was smiling, so I concluded that he'd had a good breakfast, chiefly of heroin.

"Morning, Talbot." It was Vyland speaking; the big-time crooks today find it just as easy to be civil to you as to snarl and beat you over the head and it pays off better. "What was the noise, Royale?"

"Gunther." Royale nodded indifferently at Valentino, who had just come in, left hand tucked tightly under his disabled right arm and moaning with pain. "He rode Talbot too hard and Talbot didn't like it."