“Where’s Jablonsky?” I demanded.
“Jablonsky?” Vyland raised a lazy eyebrow: George Raft couldn’t have done it any better. “What’s Jablonsky to you, Talbot?”
“My gaoler,” I said briefly. “Where is he?”
“You appear very anxious to know, Talbot?” He looked at me long and consideringly and I didn’t like it at all. “I’ve seen you before, Talbot. So has the general. I wish I could remember who it is you remind me of.”
“Donald Duck.” This was perilous ground indeed. “Where is he.”
“He’s left. Lammed out. With his seventy thousand bucks.”
“Lammed out” was a slip, but I let it pass. “Where is he?”
“You are becoming boringly repetitious, my friend.” He snapped his fingers. “Larry, the cables.”
Larry picked up some papers from the desk, handed them to Vyland, grinned at me wolfishly and resumed his pacing.
“The general and I are very careful people, Talbot,” Vyland went on. “Some people might say highly suspicious. Same thing. We checked up on you. We checked in England, Holland and Venezuela.” He waved the papers. “These came in this morning. They say you’re all you claim to be, one of Europe’s top salvage experts. So now we can go ahead and use you. So now we don’t need Jablonsky any more. So we let him go this morning. With his cheque. He said he fancied a trip to Europe.”
Vyland was quiet, convincing, utterly sincere and could have talked his way past St. Peter. I looked as I thought St. Peter might have looked as he was in the process of being convinced, then I said a lot of things St. Peter would never have said and finished up by snarling: “The dirty lying double-crosser!”
“Jablonsky?” Again the George Raft touch with the eyebrows.
“Yes, Jablonsky. To think that I listened to that lying two-timer. To think I even spent five seconds listening to him. He promised me——”
“Well, what did he promise you?” Vyland asked softly.
“No harm now,” I scowled. “He reckoned I was for the high jump here — and he reckoned that the charges that had had him dismissed from the New York police had been rigged. He thinks — or said he thought — he could prove it, if he was given the chance to investigate certain policemen and certain police files.” I swore again. “And to think that I believed—–”
“You’re wandering, Talbot,” Vyland interrupted sharply. He was watching me very closely indeed. “Get on.”
“He thought he could buy this chance — and at the same time have me help him while he helped me. He spent a couple of hours in our room trying to remember an old federal code and then he wrote a telegram to some agency offering to supply some very interesting information about Generai Ruthven in exchange for a chance to examine certain files. And I was mug enough to think he meant it!”
“You don’t by any chance happen to remember ‘the name of the man to whom this telegram was addressed?”
“No. I forget.”
“You better remember, Talbot. You may be buying yourself something very important to you — your life.”
I looked at him without expression, then stared at the floor. Finally I said without looking up: “Catin, Cartin, Curtin — yes, that was it. Curtin. J. C. Curtin.”
“And all he offered was to give information if his own conditions were met. Is that it?”
“That’s it.”
“Talbot, you’ve just bought yourself your life.”
Sure, I’d bought myself my life. I noticed Vyland didn’t specify how long I would be allowed to hang on to my purchase. Twenty-four hours, if that. It all depended how the job went. But I didn’t care. The satisfaction it had given me to stamp on Valentino’s hand upstairs was nothing compared to the glow I felt now. They’d fallen for my story, they’d fallen for it hook, line and sinker. In the circumstances, with the cards dealt the right way, it had been inevitable that they should. And I’d dealt my cards just right. Judged from the standpoint of their limited awareness of the extent of my knowledge, it would have been impossible for me to have concocted such a story. They didn’t and couldn’t know that I knew Jablonsky to be dead, that they had him tailed yesterday and deciphered the telegram’s address: for they didn’t know that I had been in the kitchen garden during the previous night, that Mary had overheard their conversation in the library and that she had been to see me. Had they thought I had been an accomplice of Jablonsky’s throughout, they’d have shot me out of hand. As it was, they wouldn’t shoot me for some time yet. Not a long time. But perhaps long enough.
I saw Vyland and Royale exchange glances, a mere flicker, and the faint shrug of Vyland’s shoulders. They were tough all right, those two, tough and cool and ruthless and calculating and dangerous. For the past twelve hours they must have lived with the knowledge or the possibility that Federal agents would be around their necks any moment but they had shown no awareness of pressure, no signs of strain. I wondered what they would have thought, how they would have reacted, had they known that Federal agents could have been on to them all of three months ago. But the time had not then been ripe. Nor was it yet.
“Well, gentlemen, is there any need for further delay?” It was the first time the general had spoken, and for all his calmness there was a harsh burred edge of strain beneath. “Let’s get it over with. The weather is deteriorating rapidly and there’s a hurricane warning out. We should leave as soon as possible.”
He was right about the weather, except in the tense he used. It had deteriorated. Period. The wind was no longer a moan, it was a high sustained keening howl through the swaying oaks, accompanied by intermittent squally showers of brief duration but extraordinary intensity. There was much low cloud in the sky, steadily thickening. I’d glanced at the barometer in the hall, and it was creeping down towards 27, which promised something very unpleasant indeed. Whether the centre of the storm was going to bit or pass by us I didn’t know: but if we stood in its path we’d have it in less than twelve hours. Probably much less.
“We’re just leaving, General. Everything’s set. Petersen is waiting for us down in the bay.” Petersen, I guessed, would be the helicopter pilot. “A couple of fast trips and we should all be out there in an hour or so. Then Talbot here can get to work.”
“All?” asked the general. “Who?”
“Yourself, myself, Royale, Talbot, Larry and, of course, your daughter.”
“Mary. Is it necessary?”
Vyland said nothing, he didn’t even use the eyebrow routine again, he just looked steadily at the general. Five seconds, perhaps more, then the general’s hands unclenched and his shoulders drooped a fraction of an inch. Picture without words.
There came the quick light tap of feminine footsteps from the passage inside and Mary Ruthven walked in through the open door. She was dressed in a lime-coloured two-piece costume with an open-necked green blouse beneath. She had shadows under her eyes, she looked pale and tired and I thought she was wonderful. Kennedy was behind her, but he remained respectfully in the passage, hat in hand, a rhapsody in maroon and shining high leather boots, his face set in the remote unseeing, unhearing expression of the perfectly trained family chauffeur. I started to move aimlessly towards the door, waiting for Mary to do what I’d told her less than two hours previously, just before she’d gone back to her own room.
“I’m going in to Marble Springs with Kennedy, Father,” Mary began without preamble. It was phrased as a statement of fact, but was in effect a request for permission.
“But — well, we’re going to the rig, my dear,” her father said unhappily. “You said last night—–”
“I’m coming,” she said with a touch of impatience. “But we can’t all go at once. I’ll come on the second trip. We won’t be more than twenty minutes. Do you mind, Mr. Vylaad?” she asked sweetly.
“I’m afraid it’s rather difficult, Miss Ruthven,” Vyland said urbanely. “You see, Gunther has hurt himself—–”
“Good!”
He worked his eyebrow again. “Not so good for you, Miss Ruthven. You know how your father likes you to have protection when—–”
“Kennedy used to be all the protection I ever needed,” she said coldly. “He still is. What is more, I’m not going out to the rig with you and Royale and that — that creature there ” — she left no doubt but that she meant Larry — ” unless Kennedy comes with me. And that’s final. And I must go into Marble Springs. Now.”
I wondered when anyone had last talked to Vyland like that. But the veneer never even cracked.