Fear is the Key

‘As far as we can discover,’ the judge went on coldly, ‘you’ve spoken the truth once. Only once.’ He broke off to look at the youth who had just opened the door leading to some chambers in the rear, and lifted his eyebrows in fractional interrogation. No impatience: no irritation: all very calm: Judge Mollison was no pushover.

‘This just came for you, sir,’ the boy said nervously. He showed an envelope. ‘Radio message. I thought –’

‘Bring it here.’ The judge glanced at the envelope, nodded at no one in particular, then turned back to me.

‘As I say, you told the truth just once. You said you had come here from Havana. You did indeed. You left this behind you there, In the police station where you were being held for interrogation and trial.’ He reached into a drawer and held up a small book, blue and gold and white. ‘Recognize it?’

‘A British passport,’ I said calmly. ‘I haven’t got telescopic eyes but I assume that it must be mine otherwise you wouldn’t be making such a song and dance about it. If you had it all the time, then why –?’

‘We were merely trying to discover the degree of your mendacity, which is pretty well complete, and your trustworthiness, which does not appear to exist.’ He looked at me curiously. ‘Surely you must know what this means: if we have the passport, we have much else besides. You appear unmoved. You’re a very cool customer, Chrysler, or very dangerous: or can it be that you are just very stupid?’

‘What do you want me to do?’ I asked. ‘Faint?’

‘Our police and immigration authorities happen, for the moment at least, to be on very good terms with their Cuban colleagues.’ He might never have heard my interjection. ‘Our cables to Havana have produced much more than this passport: they have produced much interesting information.’

‘Your name is not Chrysler, it’s Ford. You have spent two and a half years in the West Indies, and are well known to the authorities in all of the principal islands.’

‘Fame, Judge. When you’ve as many friends –’

‘Notoriety. Served three minor prison sentences in two years.’ Judge Mollison was skimming through a paper he had in his hand. ‘No known means of support except three months working as consultant to a Havana salvage and diving firm.’ He looked up at me. ‘And in what – ah – capacity did you serve this firm?’

‘I told ’em how deep the water was.’

He regarded me thoughtfully then returned to his paper.

‘Associate of criminals and smugglers,’ he went on. ‘Chiefly of criminals known to be engaged in the stealing and smuggling of precious stones and metal. Known to have fomented, or attempted to foment, labour troubles in Nassau and Manzanillo, for ends suspected to be other than political. Deported from San Juan, Haiti and Venezuela. Declared persona non grata in Jamaica and refused landing permit in Nassau, Bahamas.’ He broke off and looked at me. ‘A British subject – and not even welcome in British territories.’

‘Sheer prejudice, Judge.’

‘You have, of course, made an illegal entry into the United States.’ Judge Mollison was a difficult man to knock off his stride. ‘How, I don’t pretend to know – it happens constantly in those parts. Probably by Key West and a landing at night somewhere between Port Charlotte and here. It doesn’t matter. And so now, in addition to assaulting officers of the law and carrying a gun without declaring it or possessing a licence for it, you can be charged with illegal entry. A man with your record could collect a stiff sentence for those, Ford.’

‘However, you won’t. Not here, at least. I have consulted with the state immigration authorities and they agree with me that what best meets the case is deportation: we wish no part of any person like you. We understand from the Cuban authorities that you broke custody while being held on a charge of inciting violence among dockworkers and on a further alleged charge of attempted shooting of the policeman who arrested you. Such offences carry heavy penalties in Cuba. The first charge is not an extraditable offence and on the second we have had no demand from the competent authorities. However, as I say, we intend to work not under extradition laws but deportation laws – and we’re deporting you to Havana. The proper authorities will be there to meet your plane when it lands tomorrow morning.’

I stood still and said nothing. The court-room was very quiet. Presently I cleared my throat and said, ‘Judge, I think that’s downright unkind of you.’

‘It depends on the point of view,’ he said indifferently. He rose to go, caught sight of the envelope the youth had brought in and said: ‘No, wait a moment,’ and sat down again, slitting open the envelope. He smiled bleakly at me as he extracted the flimsy sheets of paper.

‘We thought we would ask Interpol to find out what was known about you in your own country, although I hardly think now there will be any further useful information. We have all we want … No, no, I thought not, nothing fresh here, not known … no longer listed. Wait a minute though!’ The calm leisured voice rose to a sudden shout that brought the somnolent reporter jack-in-the-box bolt upright and sent him scurrying after note-book and pen that had spilled over the floor. ‘Wait a minute!’

He turned back to the first page of the cable.

‘37b Rue Paul-Valéry, Paris,’ he read rapidly. ‘Your request received, etc. etc. Regret inform you no criminal listed in rotary card index under name of John Chrysler. Could be any of four others under alias, but unlikely: identification impossible without cephalic index and fingerprints.

‘Remarkable resemblance from your description to the late John Montague Talbot. Reasons for your request and demand for urgency unknown but enclosed please find summarized copy of salient features of Talbot’s life. Regret unable to help you further, etc.

‘John Montague Talbot. Height 5 feet 11 inches, weight 185 lb, deep red hair parted far over on left side, deep blue eyes, heavy black brows, knife scar above right eye, aquiline nose, exceptionally even teeth. Carries left shoulder perceptibly higher than right owing to fairly severe limp.’

The judge looked at me and I looked out the door: I had to admit the description was not at all bad.

‘Date of birth unknown, probably early 1920s. Place of birth unknown. No record of war career. Graduated Manchester University 1948 with B.Sc. in engineering. Employed for three years by Siebe, Gorman & Co.’ He broke off, looked sharply at me. ‘Who are Siebe, Gorman & Co?’

‘Never heard of them.’

‘Of course not. But I have. Very well-known European engineering firm specializing, among other things, in all types of diving equipment. Ties in rather neatly with your employment with a salvage and diving firm in Havana, doesn’t it?’ He obviously didn’t expect an answer, for he carried on reading at once.

‘Specialized in salvage and deep-water recovery. Left Siebe Gorman, joined Dutch salvage firm from which dismissed after eighteen months following inquiries into whereabouts of two missing 28-lb ingots worth 60,000 dollars salvaged by firm in Bombay Harbour from the wreck of the ammunition and treasure ship Fort Strikene which blew up there 14th April, 1944. Returned England, joined Portsmouth salvage and diving firm, associated with “Corners” Moran, notorious jewellery thief, during salvage work on the Nantucket Light which sank off the Lizard, June 1955, carrying valuable cargo diamonds from Amsterdam to New York. Salvaged jewels to the value of 80,000 dollars were found to be missing. Talbot and Moran traced to London, arrested, escaped from police wagon when Talbot shot police officer with small concealed automatic. Police officer subsequently died.’

I was leaning far forward now, my hands gripped tightly on the edge of the box. Every eye was on me but I had eyes only for the judge. There wasn’t a sound to be heard in that stuffy courtroom except the drowsy murmur of flies high up near the ceiling and the soft sighing of a big overhead fan.

‘Talbot and Moran finally traced to riverside rubber warehouse.’ Judge Mollison was reading slowly now, almost haltingly, as if he had to take time to appreciate the significance of what he was saying. ‘Surrounded, ignored order to surrender. For two hours resisted all attempts by police armed with guns and tear-gas bombs to overcome them. Following explosion, entire warehouse swept by uncontrollable fire of great intensity. All exits guarded but no attempt at escape. Both men perished in fire. Twenty-four hours later firemen found no trace of Moran – believed to have been almost completely incinerated. Talbot’s charred remains positively identified by ruby ring worn on left hand, brass buckles of shoes and German 4.25 automatic which he was known to carry habitually …’

The judge’s voice trailed off and he sat in silence several moments. He looked at me, wonderingly, as if unable to credit what he saw, blinked, then slowly swivelled his gaze until he was looking at the little man in the cane chair.

‘A 4.25 mm gun, Sheriff? Have you any idea –?’

‘I do.’ The sheriff’s face was cold and mean and hard and his voice exactly matched his expression. ‘What we call a .21 automatic, and as far as I know there’s only one of that kind made – a German “Lilliput.”’

‘Which was what the prisoner was carrying when you arrested him.’ It was a statement, not a question. ‘And he’s wearing a ruby ring on his left hand.’ The judge shook his head again, then looked at me for a long, long moment: you could see the disbelief was slowly giving way to inescapable conviction. ‘The leopard – the criminal leopard – never changes his spots. Wanted for murder – perhaps two murders: who knows what you did to your accomplice in that warehouse? It was his body they found, not yours?’

The court was hushed and shocked and still: a falling pin would have had the lot airborne.

‘A cop-killer.’ The sheriff licked his lips, looked up at Mollison and repeated the words in a whisper. ‘A cop-killer. He’ll swing for that in England, won’t he, Judge?’

The judge was on balance again.

‘It’s not within the jurisdiction of this court to –’

‘Water!’ The voice was mine, and even to my own ears it sounded no more than a croak. I was bent over the side of the box, swaying slightly, propped up by one hand while I mopped my face with a handkerchief held in the other. I’d had plenty of time to figure it out and I think I looked the way I think I ought to have looked. At least, I hoped I did. ‘I – I think I’m going to pass out. Is there – is there no water?’

‘Water?’ The judge sounded half-impatient, half-sympathetic. ‘I’m afraid there’s no –’

‘Over there,’ I gasped. I waved weakly to a spot on the other side of the officer who was guarding me. ‘Please!’

The policeman turned away – I’d have been astonished if he hadn’t – and as he turned I pivoted on both toes and brought my left arm whipping across just below waist level – three inches higher and that studded and heavily brass-buckled belt he wore around his middle would have left me needing a new pair of knuckles. His explosive grunt of agony was still echoing through the shocked stillness of the court-room when I spun him round as he started to fall, snatched the heavy Colt from his holster and was waving it gently around the room even before the policeman had struck the side of the box and slid, coughing and gasping painfully for air, to the wooden floor.

I took in the whole scene with one swift sweeping glance. The man with the nose was staring at me with an expression as near amazement as his primitive features could register, his mouth fallen open, the mangled stub of his cigar clinging impossibly to the corner of his lower lip. The girl with the dark-blonde hair was bent forward, wide-eyed, her hand to her face, her thumb under her chin and her fore-finger crooked across her mouth. The judge was no longer a judge, he was a waxen effigy of himself, as motionless in his chair as if he had just come from the sculptor’s hands. The clerk, the reporter, the door attendant were as rigid as the judge, while the group of school-girls and the elderly spinster in charge were as goggle-eyed as ever, but the curiosity had gone from their faces and fear stepped in to take its place: the teenager nearest to me had her eyebrows arched high up into her forehead and her lips were trembling, she looked as if she were going to start weeping or screaming any moment. I hoped, vaguely, that it wasn’t going to be screaming, then an instant later I realized that it didn’t matter for there was likely going to be a great deal of noise in the very near future indeed. The sheriff hadn’t been so unarmed as I had supposed: he was reaching for his gun.

His draw was not quite the clean swift blurring action to which the cinema of my youth had accustomed me. The long flapping tails of his alpaca coat impeded his hand and he was further hindered by the arm of his cane chair. Fully four seconds elapsed before he reached the butt of his gun.

‘Don’t do it, Sheriff!’ I said quickly. ‘This cannon in my hand is pointing right at you.’

But the little man’s courage, or foolhardiness, seemed to be in inverse proportion to his size. You could tell by his eyes, by the lips ever so slightly drawn back over the tightly clamped tobacco-stained teeth, that there was going to be no stopping him. Except in the only possible way. At the full stretch of my arm I raised the revolver until the barrel was level with my eyes – this business of dead-eye Dan snap-shooting from the hip is strictly for the birds – and as the sheriff’s hand came clear of the folds of his jacket I squeezed the trigger. The reverberating boom of that heavy Colt, magnified many times by the confining walls of that small court-house, quite obliterated any other sound. Whether the sheriff cried out or the bullet struck his hand or the gun in his hand no one could say: all we could be sure of was what we saw, and that was the sheriff’s right arm and whole right side jerking convulsively and the gun spinning backwards to land on a table inches from the note-book of the startled reporter.

Already my Colt was lined up on the man at the door.

‘Come and join us, friend,’ I invited. ‘You look as if you might be having ideas about fetching help.’ I waited till he was halfway down the aisle then whirled round quickly as I heard a scuffling noise behind me.

There had been no need for haste. The policeman was on his feet, but that was all that could be said for him. He was bent almost double, one hand clutching his midriff, the knuckles of the other all but brushing the floor: he was whooping violently, gasping for the breath to ease the pain in his body. Then he slowly straightened to a crouched stooping position, and there was no fear in his face, only hurt and anger and shame and a do-or-die determination.

‘Call off your watchdog, Sheriff,’ I said curtly. ‘He’s liable to get hurt real bad next time.’

The sheriff glared at me venomously and spat out one single unprintable word. He was hunched in his chair, left hand tightly gripping his right wrist: he gave every impression of a man too preoccupied with his own hurt to worry about any damage to others.

‘Give me that gun!’ the policeman demanded hoarsely. His throat seemed to be constricted, he had difficulty in forcing out even those few words. He had taken one lurching step forward and was no more than six feet away. He was only a kid, hardly a day over twenty-one.

‘Judge!’ I said urgently.

‘Don’t do it, Donnelly!’ Judge Mollison had shaken off the first numbing shock. ‘Don’t do it! That man’s a killer. He’s got nothing to lose by killing again. Stay where you are.’

‘Give me that gun.’ Judge Mollison might have been talking to himself for all the effect his words had had. Donnelly’s voice was wooden, unemotional, the voice of a man whose decision lies so far behind that it is no longer a decision but the sole obsessive reason for his existence.

‘Stay where you are, sonny,’ I said quietly. ‘Like the judge said, I have nothing to lose. Take another step forward and I’m going to shoot you in the thigh. Have you any idea what a soft-nosed low-velocity lead bullet does, Donnelly? If it gets your thigh-bone it’ll smash it so badly that you’ll be like me and walk with a limp for the rest of your life: if it gets the femoral artery you’ll like as not bleed to death before – you fool!’

For the second time the court-room shook to the sharp crack and the hollow reverberations of the Colt. Donnelly was on the floor, both hands gripped round his lower thigh, staring up at me with an expression compounded of incomprehension and dazed disbelief.

‘We’ve all got to learn some time,’ I said flatly. I glanced at the doorway, the shots were bound to have attracted attention, but there was no one there. Not that I was anxious on this point: apart from the two constables – both of them temporarily unfit for duty – who had jumped me at the La Contessa, the sheriff and Donnelly constituted the entire police force of Marble Springs. But even so, delay was as foolish as it was dangerous.

‘You won’t get far, Talbot!’ The sheriff’s thin-lipped mouth twisted itself into exaggerated movements as he spoke through tightly clenched teeth. ‘Within five minutes of you leaving, every law officer in the county will be looking for you: within fifteen minutes the call will be state-wide.’ He broke off, wincing, as a spasm of pain twisted his face, and when he looked at me again his expression wasn’t pretty. ‘The call’s going out for a murderer, Talbot, an armed murderer: they’ll have orders to shoot on sight and shoot to kill.’

‘Look, now, Sheriff––’ the judge began, but got no further.

‘Sorry, Judge. He’s mine.’ The sheriff looked down at the policeman lying groaning on the floor. ‘The moment he took that gun he stopped being your business … You better get going, Talbot: you won’t have far to run.’

‘Shoot to kill, eh?’ I said thoughtfully. I looked round the court. ‘No, no, not the gentlemen – they might start getting death or glory ideas about having medals pinned on them …’

‘What the hell you talking about?’ the sheriff demanded.

‘Nor the young ladies of the high school. Hysteria …’ I murmured. I shook my head then looked at the girl with the dark-blonde hair. ‘Sorry, miss, it’ll have to be you.’

‘What – what do you mean?’ Maybe she was scared, maybe she was just acting scared. ‘What do you want?’

‘You. You heard what the Lone Ranger said – as soon as the cops see me they’re going to start shooting at everything in sight. But they wouldn’t shoot at a girl, especially not at one as good looking as you. I’m in a jam, miss, and I need an insurance policy. You’re it. Come on.’

‘Damn it, Talbot, you can’t do that!’ Judge Mollison sounded hoarse, frightened. ‘An innocent girl. You’d put her life in danger –’

‘Not me,’ I pointed out. ‘If anybody’s going to put her life in danger it’ll be the friends of the sheriff here.’

‘But – but Miss Ruthven is my guest. I – I invited her here this afternoon to –’

‘Contravention of the rules of the old southern hospitality. I know. Emily Post would have something to say about this.’ I caught her by the arm, pulled her none too gently to her feet and outside into the aisle. ‘Hurry up, miss, we haven’t –’

I dropped her arm and took one long step up the aisle, clubbed pistol already reversed and swinging. For some time now I’d had my eye on the broken-nosed character three seats behind the girl and the play and shift of expression across the broken landscape of his Neanderthalic features as he struggled to arrive at and finally make a decision couldn’t have been more clearly indicated by ringing bells and coloured lights.

He was almost vertical and halfway out into the aisle, with his right hand reaching deep under the lapel of his coat when the butt end of my Colt caught his right elbow. The impact jarred even my arm so I could only guess what it did to his: quite a lot, if his anguished howl and sudden collapse back into the bench were any criterion. Maybe I’d misjudged the man, maybe he’d only been reaching for another cigar; that would teach him not to carry a cigar-case under his left armpit.

He was still making a great deal of noise when I hobbled my way swiftly up the aisle, pulled the girl out into the porch, slammed the door and locked it. That would only give me ten seconds, fifteen at the most, but it was all I needed. I grabbed the girl’s hand and ran down the path to the street.

There were two cars parked by the kerb. One, an open Chevrolet without any official markings, was the police car in which the sheriff, Donnelly and I had arrived at the court, the other, presumably Judge Mollison’s, a low-built Studebaker Hawk. The judge’s looked to be the faster car of the two, but most of these American cars had automatic drive controls with which I was quite unfamiliar: I didn’t know how to drive a Studebaker and the time it would take me to find out could be fatal. On the other hand, I did know how to operate the automatic drive on a Chevrolet. On the way up to the court-house I’d sat up front beside the sheriff, who drove, and I hadn’t missed a move he made.

‘Get in!’ I nodded my head in the direction of the police car. ‘Fast!’

I saw her open the door out of a corner of an eye while I spared a few moments for the Studebaker. The quickest and most effective way of immobilizing any car is by smashing its distributor. I spent three or four seconds hunting for the bonnet catch before I gave it up and turned my attention to the front tyre nearest me. Had it been a tubeless tyre and had I been carrying my usual automatic, the small calibre steel-jacketed bullet might have failed to make more than a tiny hole, no sooner made than sealed: as it was, the mushrooming Colt bullet split the sidewall wide open and the Studebaker settled with a heavy bump.

The girl was already seated in the Chevrolet. Without bothering to open the door I vaulted over the side into the driving-seat, took one swift glance at the dashboard, grabbed the white plastic handbag the girl held in her lap, broke the catch and ripped the material in my hurry to open it, and emptied the contents on the seat beside me. The car keys were on the top of the pile, which meant she’d shoved them right to the bottom of her bag. I’d have taken long odds that she was good and scared, but longer odds still that she wasn’t terrified.

‘I suppose you thought that was clever?’ I switched on the motor, pressed the automatic drive button, released the handbrake and gunned the motor so savagely that the rear tyres spun and whined furiously on the loose gravel before getting traction. ‘Try anything like that again and you’ll be sorry. Regard that as a promise.’

I am a fairly experienced driver and where road-holding and handling are concerned I am no admirer of American cars: but when it came to straightforward acceleration those big V-8 engines could make the average British and European sports models look silly. The Chevrolet leapt forward as if it had been fitted with a rocket-assisted take-off – I suspected that being a police car it might have had a hotted-up engine – and when I’d straightened it up and had time for a fast look in the mirror we were a hundred yards away from the court-house: I had time only for a glimpse of the judge and the sheriff running out on to the road, staring after the Chevrolet, before a sharp right-angle bend came sweeping towards us: a quick twist of the wheel to the right, a four-wheel drift, the back end breaking away, another twist of the wheel to the left and then, still accelerating, we were clear of the town limits and heading into the open country.

TWO

We were heading almost due north along the highway, a white and dusty ribbon of road built up several feet above the level of the surrounding land. Away to our left the Gulf of Mexico glittered and twinkled like an opalescent emerald under the broiling sun. Between the road and the sea was a flat uninteresting belt of low mangrove coast, to our right swampy forests not of palms or palmettos as I would have expected to find in those parts but pine, and disheartened-looking scrub pine at that.