Fear is the Key

There was a platform not ten feet above my head, with a light shining off feebly to the right. It wasn't much of a light, but enough to let me see something of the dark maze of girders that was the derrick, enough to let me see a dark shadow above and also to the right which looked like some tiny cabin. And then Larry's torch steadied and shone vertically upwards and I saw something that made me feel slightly sick: the platform above was no solid sheet-metal but open grille-work through which a person's every move could be seen: gone were my hopes of waiting till Larry's head appeared above the level of the platform and then kicking it off his shoulders.

I glanced downwards. Larry was no more than ten feet below, and both his gun and torch were levelled on me, 1 could see the dull glint of light on the barrel and the dark hole in the middle where death hid. One little pull on the trigger finger and that dark hole would be a streaking tongue of fire in the darkness of the night. Curtains for Talbot. 1 wondered vaguely, stupidly, if my eyes would have time to register the bright flame before the bullet and the oblivion it carried with it closed my eyes for ever… And then, slowly, I realised that Larry wasn't going to fire, not even Larry was crazy enough to fire, not then. The 185-pound deadweight of my falling body would have brushed him off that ladder like a fly and from that ten-story height neither of us would have bounced off that steel deck enough so that anyone would notice.

I kept on climbing and reached the top. Had it been a solid platform there I don't think I would have managed to pull myself on to it against that wind, my one good hand would just have scrabbled about on the smooth metal surface until exhaustion overtook me and I fell back off the ladder: tout as it was I managed to hook my fingers in the openwork steel grille and drag myself on to the platform.

Larry was close behind. He gestured with his torch and I got his meaning. I moved to one side, past the little cabin at the corner where a lamp on a recessed shelf threw a faint light that was cut off abruptly at waist level, and waited.

Slowly, carefully, his eyes never leaving my face, Larry came over the top and straightened to his feet. I moved farther along the monkey-board, slowly, backwards, with my face to Larry. On my right I could dimly make out the big pipe storage racks, on my left the edge of the monkey board, no handrail, just a sheer drop of a hundred feet.

Then. I stopped. The gallery of the monkey-board seemed to run all the way round the outside of the derrick and it would have suited Larry just fine to have me out on the northern edge where, wind or no wind, a good shove — or a.45 slug — might have sent me tumbling direct into the sea a hundred and fifty feet below.

Larry came close to me. He'd switched off his torch now. The fixed light on the cabin side might leave the lowermost three feet in darkness, but it was enough for him and he wouldn't want to take even the remote chance of anyone spotting a flickering torchlight and wondering what any crazy person should be doing up on the monkey-board in that hurricane wind and with all the work stopped.

He halted three feet away. He was panting heavily and he had his wolf grin on again.

"Keep going, Talbot," he shouted.

I shook my head. "This is as far as I'm going." I hadn't really heard him, the response was purely automatic, I had just seen something that made me feel ice-cold, colder by far than the biting lash of that rain. I had thought, down in the radio shack, that Mary Ruthven had been playing possum, and now I knew I had been right. She had been conscious, she must have taken off after us immediately we had left. There was no mistaking at all that gleaming dark-blonde head, those heavily plaited braids that appeared over the top of the ladder and moved up into the night.

You fool, I thought savagely, you crazy, crazy little fool. I had no thought for the courage it must have taken to make that climb, for the exhausting nightmare it must have been, even for the hope it held out for myself. I could feel nothing but bitterness and resentment and despair and behind all of those the dim and steadily growing conviction that I'd count the world well lost for Mary Ruthven.

"Get going," Larry shouted again.

"So you can shove me into the sea? No."

"Turn round."

"So you can sap me with that gun and they find me lying on the deck beneath, no suspicion of foul play." She was only two yards away now. "Won't do, Larry boy. Shine your torch on my shoulder. My left shoulder."

The flash clicked oa and I heard again that maniac giggle.

"So I did get you, hey, Talbot?"

"You got me." She was right behind him now, that great wind had swept away any incautious sound she might have made. I had been watching her out of the corner of my eye, but now I suddenly looked straight at her over Larry's shoulder, my eyes widening in hope.

"Try again, copper," Larry giggled. "Can't catch me twice that way."