Fear is the Key

"Yeah." Jablonsky took the cheque, glanced casually at it, then looked at the general, a speculative glint in his eye.

"Your pen slipped, General." he drawled. "I asked for fifty thousand. You got seventy thousand here."

"Correct." Ruthven inclined his head and glanced at me. "I had offered ten thousand dollars for information about this man here. I also feel that I'm morally bound to make good the five thousand offered by the authorities. It's so much easier to make out one lump-sum cheque to one person, don't you agree?"

"And the extra five thousand?"

"For your trouble and the pleasure it will give me to hand this man over to the authorities personally." Again I couldn't be sure whether or not he smiled. "I can afford to indulge those whims, you know."

"Your pleasure is my pleasure, General. I'll be on my way, then. Sure you can handle this fellow? He's tough, fast, tricky as they come."

"I have people who can handle him." It was plain that the general wasn't referring to the butler and another uniformed servant hovering in the background. He pressed a bell, and when some sort of footman came to the door, said: "Ask Mr. Vyland and Mr. Royale to come in, will you, Fletcher?"

"Why don't you ask them yourself, General?" To my way of thinking I was the central figure in that little group, but they hadn't even asked me to speak, so I thought it was time to say something. I bent down to the bowl of artificial flowers on the table by the fire, and pulled up a fine-meshed microphone. "This room's bugged. A hundred gets one your friends have heard every word that's been said. For a millionaire and high society flier, Ruthven, you have some strange habits." I broke off and looked at the trio who had just come through the doorway. "And even stranger friends."

Which wasn't quite an accurate statement. The first man in looked perfectly at home in that luxurious setting. He was of medium height, medium build, dressed in a perfectly cut dinner suit and smoking a cigar as long as your arm. That was the expensive smell I'd picked up as soon as I had come into the library. He was in his early fifties, with black hair touched by grey at the temples: his neat clipped moustache was jet black. His face was smooth and unlined and deeply sunburnt. He was Hollywood's ideal of a man to play the part of a top executive, smooth, urbane and competent to a degree. It was only when he came closer and you saw the eyes and the set of the planes of his face that you realised that here was a toughness, both physical and mental, and a hardness that you would never see around a movie set. A man to watch.

The second man was more off-beat. It was hard to put a finger on the quality that made him so. He was dressed in a soft grey flannel suit, white shirt and grey tie of the same shade as the suit. He was slightly below medium height, broadly built, with a pale face and smooth slicked hair almost the same colour as Mary Ruthven's. It wasn't until you looked again and again that you saw what made him off-beat, it wasn't anything he had, it was something he didn't have. He had the most expressionless face, the emptiest eyes I had ever seen in any man.

Off-beat was no description for the man who brought up the rear. He belonged in that library the way Mozart would have belonged in a rock and roll club. He was only twenty-one or two, tall, skinny, with a dead-white face and coal-black eyes. The eyes were never still, they moved restlessly from side to side as if it hurt them to be still, flickering from one face to another like a will-o'-the-wisp on an autumn evening. I didn't notice what he wore, all I saw was his face. The face of a hophead, a junky, an advanced dope addict. Take away his white powder for even twenty-four hours and he'd be screaming his head off as all the devils in hell closed in on him.

"Come in, Mr. Vyland." The general was speaking to the man with the cigar and I wished for the tenth time that old Ruthven's expression wasn't so hard to read. He nodded in my direction. "This is Talbot, the wanted man. And this is Mr. Jablonsky, the man who brought him back."

"Glad to meet you, Mr. Jablonsky." Vyland smiled in a friendly fashion and put his hand out. "I'm the general's chief production engineer." Sure, he was the general's chief production engineer, that made me President of the United States. Vyland nodded at the man in the grey suit. "This is Mr. Royale, Mr. Jablonsky."

"Mr. Jablonsky! Mr. Jablonsky!" The words weren't spoken, they were hissed by the tall thin boy with the staring eyes. His hand dived under the lapel of his jacket and I had to admit he was fast. The gun trembled in his hand. He swore, three unprintable words in succession, and the eyes were glazed and mad. "I've waited two long years for this, you — Damn you, Royale! Why did-?"