Fear is the Key

"It's damnably insulting and utterly ridiculous," he was saying in a voice that I'd never beard 'before. A dry, icy voice that I could just see being brought to bear for maximum effect in quelling an unruly board of directors. "I don't blame Talbot, murderer though he is. This gun-waving, this guarding has got to stop. I insist on it, Vyland. Good God, man, it's so utterly unnecessary and I didn't think a man like you would go in for cheaply melodramatic stuff like this." The general was warming to his theme of making a stand against being shepherded around at pistol point, or at least against constant surveillance. "Look at the weather, man — no one can move from 'here in the next twelve hours at least. We're not in the position to make any trouble — and you know I'm the last man in the world to want to. I can vouch personally for my daughter and Kennedy."

The general was sharp, sharp as a needle, sharper than either Vyland or Royale. He was a bit late in the day in making Ms stand against surveillance, I guessed what he was really after was the power of freedom of movement — possibly for himself, even more possibly for his chauffeur. And, what was more, he was getting it. Vyland was agreeing, with the reservation that when he and Royale went in the bathyscaphe the general, his chauffeur and Mary should remain in the room above the pillar along with the rest of Vyland's men. I still had no idea how many men Vyland actually had aboard the rig, but it seemed likely that apart from Larry, Gbatti and his friend there were at least three others. And they would be men in the mould of Gbatti.

Conversation broke off short as a knock came again to the door. A steward — or stewards — set down covers, made to serve but were told by the general to go. As the door closed he said: "Mary, I wonder if you would take something to Talbot?"

There came the soft sound of the rubbing of chair legs on the carpet, then Kennedy's voice, saying: "If I might be permitted, sir?"

"Thank you, Kennedy. Just a minute while my daughter serves it out." By and by the curtain was pushed to one side and Kennedy carefully Said a plate in front of me. Beside the plate he laid a small blue leather-covered book, straightened, looked at me expressionlessly and left.

He was gone before I had realised the significance of what he had done. He knew very well that whatever concessions in freedom of movement the general had gained did not apply to me, I was going to be under eye and gun for sixty seconds every minute, sixty minutes every hour and that our last chance for talking was gone. But not our last chance for communication, not with that little book lying around.

It wasn't strictly a book, it was that cross between a diary and an account book, with a tiny pencil stuck in the loop of leather, which garages and car-dealers dole out in hundreds of thousands, usually at Christmas time, to the more solvent of their customers. Nearly all chauffeurs carried one for entering up in the appropriate spaces the cost of petrol, oil, services, repairs, mileage and fuel consumption. None of those things interested me: all that interested me was the empty spaces in the diary pages and the little blue pencil.

With one eye on the book and one on the curtain and both ears attuned to the voices and sounds beyond that curtain I wrote steadily for the better part of five minutes, feeding myself blindly with fork in left hand while with my right I tried to set down in the briefest time and the shortest compass everything I wanted to tell Kennedy. When I was finished I felt reasonably satisfied: there was still a great deal left to chance but it was the best I could do. Accepting of chances was the essence of this game.

Perhaps ten minutes after I had finished writing Kennedy brought me in a cup of coffee. The book was nowhere to be seen, but he didn't hesitate, his hand went straight under the crumpled napkin in front of me, closed over the little book and slid it smoothly inside his tunic. I was beginning to have a great deal of confidence indeed in Simon Kennedy.

Five minutes later Vyland and Royale marched me back to the other side of the rig. Negotiating the hurricane blast that swept across the open well-deck was no easier this time than it had been the last, and in the intervening half-hour the darkness had deepened until it was almost as black as night.

At twenty past three I dropped once more down into the bathyscaphe and pulled the hatch cover tight behind me.

CHAPTER X

At half past six I left the bathyscaphe. I was glad to leave. If you have no work to occupy you — and apart from a task lasting exactly one minute I hadn't done a stroke that afternoon — the interior of a bathyscaphe has singularly little to offer in the way of entertainment and relaxation. I left Cibatti to screw down the hatch in the floor of the pillar and climbed alone up the hundred and eighty iron rungs to the compartment at the top. Royale was there, alone.

"Finished, Talbot?" he asked.