I took a breather, hooked my forearm over a rung and looked down. One look was enough. I forgot about the pain and weariness and started climbing faster than ever, hunching my way upwards like a giant koala bear. Larry was down there at the foot of the ladder, flickering his torch in all directions and even with that bird-brain of his it was only going to be a matter of time until it occurred to him to shine that torch upwards.
It was the longest ladder I had ever climbed. It seemed endless, and I knew now that it must be some part of the drilling derrick, the kidder, I was now almost sure, that led up to the “monkey board,” that narrow shelf where a man guided the half-ton sections of the drill pipe, as it came from the ground, into the storage racks behind. The only thing I could remember about the monkey was the cheerless fact that it was devoid of handrails — those would only get in the way of the man guiding the heavy drill sections into place.
A jarring vibrating clang as if the iron ladder had been struck by a sledge-hammer was Larry’s way of announcing that he had caught sight of me. The bullet had struck the rung on which my foot rested and for one bad moment I thought it had gone through my foot. When I realised it hadn’t I took another quick look down.
Larry was coming up after me. I couldn’t see him, but I could see the torch clutched in one hand making regularly erratic movements as he swarmed his way up the ladder making about three times the speed I was. It wasn’t in character this, Larry could never have been accused of having an excess of courage: either he was loaded to the eyes or he was driven by fear — fear that I should escape and Vyland find out that he had been trying to murder me. And there was the further possibility, and a very strong one, that Larry had only one or two shells left in ‘his gun: he couldn’t afford not to make those count.
I became gradually aware of lightness above and around me. I thought at first that this must be a glow cast from the aircraft warning lights on the top of the derrick, but in the same instant as the thought occurred I knew it to be wrong: the top of the derrick was still over a hundred feet above where I was. I took another breather, screwed my eyes almost shut against the stinging lash of the rain and peered upwards into the murky gloom.
There was a platform not ten feet above my head, with a light shining off feebly to the right. It wasn’t much of a light, but enough to let me see something of the dark maze of girders that was the derrick, enough to let me see a dark shadow above and also to the right which looked like some tiny cabin. And then Larry’s torch steadied and shone vertically upwards and I saw something that made me feel slightly sick: the platform above was no solid sheet-metal but open grille-work through which a person’s every move could be seen: gone were my hopes of waiting till Larry’s head appeared above the level of the platform and then kicking it off his shoulders.
I glanced downwards. Larry was no more than ten feet below, and both his gun and torch were levelled on me, 1 could see the dull glint of light on the barrel and the dark hole in the middle where death hid. One little pull on the trigger finger and that dark hole would be a streaking tongue of fire in the darkness of the night. Curtains for Talbot. 1 wondered vaguely, stupidly, if my eyes would have time to register the bright flame before the bullet and the oblivion it carried with it closed my eyes for ever. . . . And then, slowly, I realised that Larry wasn’t going to fire, not even Larry was crazy enough to fire, not then. The 185-pound deadweight of my falling body would have brushed him off that ladder like a fly and from that ten-story height neither of us would have bounced off that steel deck enough so that anyone would notice.
I kept on climbing and reached the top. Had it been a solid platform there I don’t think I would have managed to pull myself on to it against that wind, my one good hand would just have scrabbled about on the smooth metal surface until exhaustion overtook me and I fell back off the ladder: tout as it was I managed to hook my fingers in the openwork steel grille and drag myself on to the platform.
Larry was close behind. He gestured with his torch and I got his meaning. I moved to one side, past the little cabin at the corner where a lamp on a recessed shelf threw a faint light that was cut off abruptly at waist level, and waited.
Slowly, carefully, his eyes never leaving my face, Larry came over the top and straightened to his feet. I moved farther along the monkey-board, slowly, backwards, with my face to Larry. On my right I could dimly make out the big pipe storage racks, on my left the edge of the monkey board, no handrail, just a sheer drop of a hundred feet.
Then. I stopped. The gallery of the monkey-board seemed to run all the way round the outside of the derrick and it would have suited Larry just fine to have me out on the northern edge where, wind or no wind, a good shove — or a .45 slug — might have sent me tumbling direct into the sea a hundred and fifty feet below.
Larry came close to me. He’d switched off his torch now. The fixed light on the cabin side might leave the lowermost three feet in darkness, but it was enough for him and he wouldn’t want to take even the remote chance of anyone spotting a flickering torchlight and wondering what any crazy person should be doing up on the monkey-board in that hurricane wind and with all the work stopped.
He halted three feet away. He was panting heavily and he had his wolf grin on again.
“Keep going, Talbot,” he shouted.
I shook my head. “This is as far as I’m going.” I hadn’t really heard him, the response was purely automatic, I had just seen something that made me feel ice-cold, colder by far than the biting lash of that rain. I had thought, down in the radio shack, that Mary Ruthven had been playing possum, and now I knew I had been right. She had been conscious, she must have taken off after us immediately we had left. There was no mistaking at all that gleaming dark-blonde head, those heavily plaited braids that appeared over the top of the ladder and moved up into the night.
You fool, I thought savagely, you crazy, crazy little fool. I had no thought for the courage it must have taken to make that climb, for the exhausting nightmare it must have been, even for the hope it held out for myself. I could feel nothing but bitterness and resentment and despair and behind all of those the dim and steadily growing conviction that I’d count the world well lost for Mary Ruthven.
“Get going,” Larry shouted again.
“So you can shove me into the sea? No.”
“Turn round.”
“So you can sap me with that gun and they find me lying on the deck beneath, no suspicion of foul play.” She was only two yards away now. “Won’t do, Larry boy. Shine your torch on my shoulder. My left shoulder.”
The flash clicked oa and I heard again that maniac giggle.
“So I did get you, hey, Talbot?”
“You got me.” She was right behind him now, that great wind had swept away any incautious sound she might have made. I had been watching her out of the corner of my eye, but now I suddenly looked straight at her over Larry’s shoulder, my eyes widening in hope.
“Try again, copper,” Larry giggled. “Can’t catch me twice that way.”
Throw your arms round his neck or his legs, I prayed. Or throw your coat over his head. But don’t, don’t, don’t go for his gun-hand.
She went for his gun-hand. She reached round his right side and I plainly heard the smack as her right hand closed over his right wrist.
For a moment Larry stood stock-still. Had he jumped or twisted or moved, I would have been on to him like an express train, but he didn’t, the very unexpectedness of the shock temporarily petrified him. It petrified his gun hand too — it was still pointing straight at me.
And it was still levelled at my heart when he made a violent grab for Mary’s right wrist with his left hand. A jerk up with his left hand, a jerk down with his right and his gun-hand was free. Then he moved a little to his left, jerked her forward a foot, pinned her against the storage racks to the right and started to twist her wrist away from him. He knew who he had now and the wolf grin was back on his face and those coal-black eyes and the gun were levelled on me all the time.