Fear is the Key

"There's a young lady here, Larry." I could have sworn that Royale's hand hadn't reached under his coat, or for his hip pocket, but there had been no mistaking the flash of dulled metal in his hand, the sharp crack of the barrel on Larry's wrist and the clatter of the boy's gun bouncing off a brass-topped table. As an example of sleight-of-hand conjuring, I'd never seen anything to beat it.

"We know Mr. Jablonsky," Royale was continuing. His voice was curiously musical and soothing and soft. "At least, Larry and I know. Don't we, Larry? Larry did six months once on a narcotics charge. It was Jablonsky that sent him up."

"Jablonsky sent-" the general began.

"Jablonsky." Royale smiled and nodded at the big man. "Detective-Lieutenant Herman Jablonsky, of New York Homicide."

CHAPTER IV

It was one of those silences. It went on and on and on.

Pregnant, they call it. It didn't worry me much, I was for the high jump anyway. It was the general who spoke first and his voice and face were stiff and cold as he looked at the man in the dinner suit.

"What is the explanation of this outrageous conduct, Vyland?" he demanded. "You bring into this house a man who is apparently not only a narcotics addict and carries a gun, but who has also served a prison sentence. As for the presence of a police officer, someone might care to inform

"Relax, General. You can drop the front." It was Royale who spoke, his voice quiet and soothing as before and curiously devoid of any trace of insolence. "I wasn't quite accurate. Ex-Detective-Lieutenant, I should have said. Brightest boy in the bureau in his day, first narcotics, then homicide, more arrests and more convictions for arrests than any other police officer in the eastern states. But your foot slipped, didn't it, Jablonsky?"

Jablonsky said nothing and his face showed nothing, but it didn't mean he wasn't thinking plenty. My face showed nothing, but I was thinking plenty. I was thinking how I could try to get away. The servants had vanished at a wave of the hand from the general and, for the moment, everyone seemed to have lost interest in me. I turned my head casually. I was wrong, there was someone who hadn't lost interest in me. Valentino, my court-room acquaintance, was standing in the passageway just outside the open door, and the interest he was taking in me more than made up for the lack of interest in the library. I was pleased to see that he was carrying his right arm in a sling. His left thumb was hooked in the side pocket of his coat, and although he might have had a big thumb it wasn't big enough to make all that bulge in his pocket. He would just love to see me trying to get away.

"Jablonsky here was the central figure in the biggest police scandal to hit New York since the war," Royale was saying. "All of a sudden there were a lot of murders — important murders — in his parish, and Jablonsky boobed on the lot. Everyone knew a protection gang was behind the killings. Everybody except Jablonsky. All Jablonsky knew was that he was getting ten grand a stiff to look in every direction but the right one. But he had even more enemies inside the force than outside, and they nailed him. Eighteen months ago it was, and he had the headlines to himself for an entire week. Don't you remember, Mr. Vyland?"

"Now I do," Vyland nodded. "Sixty thousand tucked away and they never laid a finger on a cent. Three years he got, wasn't it?"

"And out in eighteen months," Royale finished. "Jumped the wall, Jablonsky?"

"Good conduct remission," Jablonsky said calmly. "A respectable citizen again. Which is more than could be said for you, Royale. You employing this man, General?"

"I fail to see-"

"Because if you are, it'll cost you a hundred bucks more than you think. A hundred bucks is the price Royale usually charges his employers for a wreath for his victims. A very fancy wreath. Or has the price gone up, Royale? And who are you putting the ringer on this time?"

Nobody said anything. Jablonsky had the floor.

"Royale here is listed in the police files of half the states in the Union, General. Nobody's ever pinned anything on him yet, but they know all about him. No. 1 remover in the United States, not furniture but people. He charges high, but he's good and there's never any comeback. A free-lance, and his services are in terrific demand by all sorts of people you'd never dream of, not only because he never fails to give satisfaction but also because of the fact that it's a point of Royale's code that he'll never touch a man who has employed him. An awful lot of people sleep an awful lot easier, General, just because they know they're on Royale's list of untouchables." Jablonsky rubbed a bristly chin with a hand the size of a shovel. "I wonder who he could be after this time, General? Could it even be yourself, do you think?"