Fear is the Key

For the first time the general registered emotion. Not even the beard and moustache could hide a narrowing of the eyes, a tightening of the lips and a slight but perceptible draining of colour from the cheeks. He wet his lips, slowly, and looked at Vyland.

"Did you know anything of this? What truth is there "Jablonsky's just shooting off the top of his mouth," Vyland interjected smoothly. "Let's get them into another room, General. We must talk."

Ruthven nodded, his face still pale, and Vyland glanced at Royale. Royale smiled and said without inflection: "All right, you two, out. Leave that gun there, Jablonsky."

"And if I don't?"

"You haven't cashed that cheque yet," Royale said obliquely. They'd been listening, all right.

Jablonsky put his gun on the table. Royale himself didn't have a gun in his hand. With the speed he could move at it would have been quite superfluous anyway. The hophead, Larry, came up behind me and dug his pistol barrel in my kidney with a force that made me grunt in pain. Nobody said anything, so I said: "Do that again, hophead, and it'll take a dentist a whole day to repair your face." So he did it again, twice as painfully as before, and when I swung round he was too quick for me and caught me with the barrel of his gun high up on the face and raked the sight down my cheek. Then he stood off, four feet away, gun pointed at my lower stomach and those crazy eyes jumping all over the place, a wicked smile on his face inviting me to jump him. I mopped some of the blood off my face and turned and went out the door.

Valentino was waiting for me, gun in hand and heavy boots on his feet, and by the time Royale came leisurely out of the library, closed the door behind him and stopped Valentino with a single word, I couldn't walk. There's nothing wrong with my thigh, it's carried me around for years, but it's not made of oak and Valentino wore toe-plates on his boots. It just wasn't my lucky night. Jablonsky helped me off the floor into an adjacent room. I stopped at the doorway, looked back at the grinning Valentino and then at Larry, and I wrote them both down in my little black book.

We spent perhaps ten minutes in that room, Jablonsky and I sitting, the hophead pacing up and down with the gun in his hand and hoping I would twitch an eyebrow, Royale leaning negligently against a table, nobody saying anything, until by and by the butler came in and said the general wanted to see us. We all trooped out again. Valentino was still there, but I made it safely to the library. Maybe he'd hurt his toe, but I knew it wasn't that: Royale had told him once to lay off, and just once would be all that Royale would have to tell anybody anything.

A far from subtle change had taken place in the atmosphere since we'd left. The girl was still sitting on a stool by the fire, head bent and the flickering light gleaming off her wheat-coloured braids, but Vylaud and the general seemed easy and relaxed and confident and the latter was even smiling. A couple of newspapers were lying on the library table and I wondered sourly if those, with their big black banner headlines "Wanted Killer Slays Constable, Wounds Sheriff "and the far from flattering pictures of myself had anything to do with their confidence. To emphasise the change in atmosphere, a footman came in with a tray of glasses, decanter and soda siphon. He was a young man, but moved with a peculiarly stiff leaden-footed gait and he laid the tray down on the table with so laborious a difficulty that you could almost hear his joints creak. His colour didn't look too good either. I looked away, glanced at him again and then indifferently away once more, hoping that the knowledge of what I suddenly knew didn't show in my face.

They'd read all the right books on etiquette; the footman and the butler knew exactly what to do. The footman brought in the drinks, the butler carried them around. He gave a sherry to the girl, whisky to each of the four men — Hophead was pointedly bypassed — and planted himself in front of me. My gaze travelled from his hairy wrists to his broken nose to the general in the background. The general nodded, so I looked back at the silver tray again. Pride said no, the magnificent aroma of the amber liquid that had been poured from that triangular dimpled bottle said yes, but pride carried the heavy handicap of my hunger, soaked clothes and the beating I'd just had and the aroma won looking round. I took the glass and eyed the general over the rim. "A last drink for the condemned man, eh, General? "

"Not condemned yet." He lifted his glass. "Your health, Talbot."

"Very witty," I sneered. "What do they do in the state of Florida, General? Strap you over a cyanide bucket or just fry you 'in the hot seat?"

"Your health," he repeated. "You're not condemned, maybe you'll never be condemned. I have a proposition to put before you, Talbot."