This Way for a Shroud

"I am very glad to have you here," he said, and was aware that he was gushing without being able to help himself. "It was very good of Big Joe . . ."

"Where are they?" Ferrari interrupted, his sunken eyes on Gollowitz's face.

Gollowitz gulped, stuttered and looked helplessly at Seigel.

"You mean these two you've come to take care of?" Seigel asked, his voice off-key.

"Who else?" Ferrari said impatiently. "Where are they? Don't you know?"

"They are in a hunting lodge in Butcher's Wood," Gollowitz told him hurriedly. He had received detailed information from McCann only this morning. "I have a map here." He opened a drawer in the desk, took out a neatly prepared plan and pushed it across the desk.

Ferrari picked it up, folded it into four and put it in his pocket without looking at it.

"How do you want me to kill them ?" he asked.

"I'll leave that to you," Gollowitz said. "But it is essential that both of them should appear to the accidentally."

Ferrari pursed his thin lips.

"When are they to the?" he asked, sitting down.

"Wouldn't it be better to discuss the means of getting at them?" Gollowitz suggested, stung by Ferrari's arrogant tone. "If it were all that easy I wouldn't have sent for you. They are guarded night and day. No one can get near the lodge without being seen. There are police dogs, searchlights and a small regiment of police guarding the only approach to the lodge. There are six picked detectives, all expert shots, who take it in turns to guard these two. Two women detectives never leave the Coleman girl for a moment, even when she's asleep. Two detectives guard Weiner in the same way. It's not a matter of when they are to the, but how we're going to get at them."

Ferrari ran a bony finger down the length of his nose while he regarded

Gollowitz the way a scientist would regard an unknown microbe.

"I asked you when they are to die," he said.

Gollowitz looked over at Seigel and shrugged his fat shoulders.

"As soon as possible, of course," he said curtly.

"Very well. When I have studied the map and have looked the place over, I will give you a date," Ferrari said, speaking in slow, precise English with a noticeable Italian accent. "It will probably be in two days' time."

"You mean you will kill them in two days' time?" Seigel exclaimed. "It's not possible!"

"It won't be possible for both of them to the in two days' time," Ferrari said, "but certainly one of them will the in this time. Both of them could go within two days if you didn't insist their deaths should appear accidental. Two people to the so quickly would be too much of a coincidence." He looked across at Gollowitz. "You are quite sure you want them to the accidentally?"

"It is essential," Gollowitz said, secretly pleased to make Ferrari's task even more difficult. "If the newspapers suspect they have been murdered they will raise such a stink there may be an inquiry, and we can't afford that."

"Yes." Ferrari ran his claw-like hand over his hair. "Very well, one of them will go in two or three days' time. We'll have to consider what to do with the other when the first job has been taken care of."

"You'll forgive me for being sceptical," Gollowitz said dryly, "but we have discussed ways and means of getting at these two, and we have failed completely to find a solution. You talk as if the job's already done, and yet you haven't even had the opportunity to study the ground."

Ferrari again ran his finger down his nose. It seemed to be an unconscious habit of his.

"But then I am an expert," he said quietly. "You are an amateur. You have approached this job in the wrong frame of mind. You have looked for difficulties. You have told yourself that it is impossible. You have defeated yourself; the situation hasn't defeated you." He leaned back in his chair and interlaced his bony fingers, resting them on his crossed knee. He looked like something not of this world, Seigel thought, watching him in a kind of sick fascination. When Ferrari crossed his spindly legs, both feet swung free of the ground. "I approach a job with confidence. I have never failed, and I don't intend to fail. I have had much tougher jobs to handle than this one."

"This is a damned tough job," Seigel said, trying to meet the sunken fixed eyes that felt as if they were boring holes in his brain. "You'll be damned lucky to get one of them, let alone both of them."

Ferrari leaned forward and smiled. His teeth were big, yellow and decayed. He reminded Seigel of a vicious horse, reaching forward to snap at him.

"Luck doesn't come into it," Ferrari said. "If I relied on luck I would never get anywhere. This I tell you: they will both the. I guarantee it. I don't expect you to believe me. Wait and see. Only don't forget I've told you already: when I go after anyone, I get him! I've never failed and I never will fail!"