“I’m not taking the chance you might think I am,” I began. “I heard Vyland trying to persuade the general and Mary to get rid of you. I gathered you were a potential danger to Vyland and the general and others I may not know of. From that I gathered you’re not on the inside of what’s going on. And you’re bound to know there’s something very strange indeed going on.”
He nodded. “I’m only the chauffeur. And what did they say to Vyland? “From the way he spoke the name I gathered he regarded Vyland with something less than affection.
“They stuck in their heels and refused point-blank.”
He was pleased at that. He tried not to show it, but he was.
“It seems you did the Ruthven family a great service not so long ago,” I went on. “Shot up a couple of thugs who tried to kidnap Mary.”
“I was lucky.” Where speed and violence were concerned, I guess, he’d always be lucky. “I’m primarily a bodyguard, not a chauffeur. Miss Mary’s a tempting bait for every hoodlum in the country who fancies a quick million. But I’m not the bodyguard any longer,” he ended abruptly.
“I’ve met your successor,” I nodded. “Valentino. He couldn’t guard an empty nursery.”
“Valentino?” He grinned. “Al Grunther. But Valentino suits him better. You damaged his arm, so I heard.”
“He damaged my leg. It’s black and blue and purple all over.” I eyed him speculatively. “Forgotten that you’re talking to a murderer, Kennedy?”
“You’re no murderer,” he said flatly. There was a long pause, then he broke his gaze from me and stared down at the floor.
“Patrolman Donnelly, eh?” I asked.
He nodded without speaking.
“Donnelly is as fit as you are,” I said. “Might take him some little time to wash the powder-stains out of his pants, but that’s all the damage he suffered.”
“Rigged, eh?” he asked softly.
“You’ve read about me in the papers.” I waved a hand at the magazine stand in the corner. I was still front page news and the photograph was even worse than the previous one. “The rest you’ll have heard from Mary. Some of what you’ve heard and read is true, some of it just couldn’t be less true.
“My name is John Talbot and I am, as they said in court, a salvage expert. I have been in all the places they mention, except Bombay, and for approximately the periods they mention. But I have never been engaged in any criminal activities of any kind. However, either Vyland or the general or both are very cagey birds indeed. They’ve sent cables to contacts in Holland, England and Venezuela — the general, of course, has oil interests in all three places — to check on my bona fides. They’ll be satisfied. We’ve spent a long time preparing the groundwork for this.”
“How do you know they sent those cables?”
“Every overseas cable out of Marble Springs in the past two months has been vetted. The general — all cables are in his name — uses code, of course. Perfectly legal to do so. There’s a little old man from Washington living a block away from the post office. He’s a genius with codes: he says the general’s is childish. From his point of view.”
I got up and started to walk around. The effects of the whisky were vanishing. I felt like a cold wet flounder.
“I had to get in on the inside. Up till now we’ve been working very much in the dark, but for reasons which would take too long to explain at present we knew that the general would jump at the chance of getting hold of a salvage expert. He did.”
“We?” Kennedy still had his reservations about me.
“Friends of mine. Don’t worry, Kennedy, I’ve got all the law in the world behind me. I’m not in this for myself. To make the general take the bait we had to use the general’s daughter. She knows nothing of what actually went on. Judge Mollison’s pretty friendly with the family, so I got him to invite Mary along for a meal, suggesting that she drop in at the courthouse first while she was waiting for him to clear up the last cases.”
“Judge Mollison’s in on this?”
“He is. You’ve a phone there, and a phone book. Want to ring him?”
He shook his head.
“Mollison knows,” I continued, “and about a dozen cops. All sworn to secrecy and they know that a word the wrong way and they’re looking for a job. The only person outside the law who knows anything about it is the surgeon who is supposed to have operated on Donnelly and then signed his death certificate. He’d a kind of troublesome conscience, but I finally talked him into it.”
“All a phoney,” he murmured. “Here’s one that fell for it.”
“Everybody did. They were meant to. Phoney reports from Interpol and Cuba — with the full backing of the police concerned — blank rounds in the first two chambers of Donnelly’s Colt, phoney road blocks, phoney chases by the cops, phoney—–”
“But — but the bullet in the windscreen?”
“I told her to duck. I put it there myself. Car and empty garage all laid on, and Jablonsky laid on too.”
“Mary was telling me about Jablonsky,” he said slowly. “Mary “, I noticed, not “Miss Mary”. Maybe it meant nothing, maybe it showed the way he habitually thought of her. “‘A crooked cop’, she said. Just another plant?”
“Just another plant. We’ve been working on this for over two years. Earlier on we wanted a man who knew the Caribbean backwards. Jablonsky was the man. Born and brought up in Cuba. Two years ago he was a cop, in New York homicide. It was Jablonsky who thought up the idea of rigging false charges against himself. It was smart: it not only accounted for the sudden disappearance of one of the best cops in the country, but it gave him the entree into the wrong kind of society when the need arose. He’s been working with me in the Caribbean for the past eighteen months.”
“Taking a chance, wasn’t he? I mean, Cuba is home from home for half the crooks in the States, and the chances——”
“He was disguised,” I said patiently. “Beard, moustache, both home-grown, all his hair dyed, glasses, even his own mother wouldn’t have known him.”
There was a long silence, then Kennedy put down his glass and looked steadily at me. “What goes on, Talbot?”
“Sorry. You’ll have to trust me. The less anyone knows the better. Mollison doesn’t know, none of the lawmen know. They’ve had their orders.”
“It’s that big?” he asked slowly.
“Big enough. Look, Kennedy, no questions. I’m asking you to help me. If you’re not frightened for Mary’s health, it’s time you started to be. I don’t think she knows a thing more about what goes on between Vyland and the general than you do, but I’m convinced she’s in danger. Great danger. Of her life. I’m up against big boys playing for big stakes. To win those stakes they’ve already killed eight times. Eight times to my certain knowledge. If you get mixed up in this business I’d say the chances are more than even that you’ll end up with a “bullet in your back. And I’m asking you to get mixed up in it. I’ve no right to, but I’m doing it. What’s it to be?”
Some of the colour had gone out of his brown face, but not much. He didn’t like what I’d just said, but if his hands were trembling I couldn’t notice.
“You’re a clever man, Talbot,” he said slowly. “Maybe too clever, I don’t know. But you’re clever enough not to have told me aE this unless you were pretty certain I’d do it. Playing for big stakes, you said: I think I’d like to sit in.”
I didn’t waste any time in thanking him or congratulating him. Sticking your neck in a running noose isn’t a matter for congratulation. Instead I said: “I want you to go with Mary. No matter where she goes I want you to go also. I’m almost certain that to-morrow morning — this coming morning, that is — well all be going out to the oil-rig. Mary will almost certainly go along too. She’ll have no option. You will go with her.”
He made to interrupt, but I held up my hand.
“I know, you’ve been taken off the job. Make some excuse to go up to the house to-morrow morning, early. See Mary. Tell her that Valentino is going to have a slight accident in the course of the morning and she—–”
“What do you mean, he’ll have an accident?”
“Don’t worry,” I said grimly. “He’ll have his accident all right. He won’t be able to look after himself, far less anybody else, for some time to come. Tell her that she is to insist on having you back. If she sticks out her neck and makes an issue of it she’ll win. The general won’t object, and I’m pretty sure Vyland won’t either: it’s only for a day, and after to-morrow the question of who looks after her won’t worry him very much. Don’t ask me how I know, because I don’t. But I’m banking on it.” I paused. “Anyway, Vyland will just think she’s insisting on having you because he thinks she has, shall we say, a soft spot for you.” He kept his wooden Indian expression in place, so I went on: “I don’t know whether it’s so and I don’t care. I’m just telling you what I think Vyland thinks and why that should make him accept her suggestion — that, and the fact that he doesn’t trust you and would rather have you out on the rig and under his eye anyway.”