Vyland swore, softly and vilely, looked slowly at Royale then back to me. “You mean——?” he began.
“It was all laid on,” I said tiredly. I was taking no pleasure in any of this. “The French and British Navies were carrying out tests with it in the Gulf of Lions, but they readily agreed to continue those tests out here. We made sure that it got terrific publicity, we made sure that its advantages were pointed out time and time again, that not even the biggest moron could fail to understand how good it was for stealthy underwater salvage and recovery of buried treasure. We knew it would be only a matter of time before the Temptress turned up, and she did. So we left it in a nice lonely place. But before we left it I jinxed it so thoroughly that no one apart from the electrician who’d wired it in the first place and myself could ever have got it going again. You had to have someone to unjinx it, didn’t you, Vyland? Wasn’t it a fortunate coincidence that I happened to turn up at the right time? Incidentally, I wonder what our friends the field foreman and petroleum engineer are going to say when they find that they’ve spent the better part of three months drilling a couple of miles away from where the geologists told them to: I suppose it was you and Bryson who altered the reference navigation marks on the charts to bring you within shouting distance of the treasure and miles away from where the oil strata Me. At the present rate they’ll end up with the pipe in the Indian Ocean and still no oil.”
“You’re not going to get off with this,” Vyland said savagely. “By God, you’re not—–”
“Shut up!” I interrupted contemptuously. “Shut up or I’ll turn a knob here, pull a switch there and have the two of you grovelling on your hands and knees and begging for your lives as you were doing not five minutes ago.”
They could have killed me there and then, they could have watched me die in screaming agony and the tears of joy would have rolled down their cheeks. Nobody had ever talked like this to them before, and they had just no idea what to say, what to do about it: for their lives were still in my hands. Then, after a long moment, Vyland leaned back in his stool and smiled. His mind was working again.
“I suppose, Talbot, that you were entertaining some idea of turning us over to the authorities. Is that it?” He waited for a reply, but when none came he went on: “If you were, I’d change my mind about it. For such a clever cop, Talbot, you’ve been very blind in one spot. I’m sure you wouldn’t want to be responsible for the deaths of two innocent people, would you now, Talbot?”
“What are you talking about?” I asked slowly.
“I’m talking about the general.” Vyland flicked a glance at Royale, a glance for the first time empty of fear, a look of triumph. “General Blair Ruthven. The general, his wife and his younger daughter. Do you know what I’m talking about, Talbot?”
“What’s the general’s wife got to do——?”
“My God! And for a moment I thought you had us!” The relief in Vyland’s face was an almost tangible quality. “You fool, Talbot, you blind fool! The general — did it never occur to you to think how we got him to come in with us. Did it never occur to you to wonder why a man like that would let us use his yacht, his rig and anything else we wanted to? Didn’t it, Talbot? Didn’t it?”
“Well, I thought—–”
“You thought!” he sneered. “You poor fool, old Ruthven had to help us whether he wanted to or not. He helped us because he knew the lives of his wife and young daughter depended on us.”
“His wife and young daughter? But — but they’ve had a legal separation, haven’t they — the general and his wife, I mean. I read all about it—–”
“Sure. Sure you read all about it.” Vyland, his terror forgotten, was almost jovial now. “So did a hundred million others. The general made good and sure mat the story got around. It would have been just too bad if the story hadn’t got around. They’re hostages, Talbot. We’ve got them in a place of safety where* they’ll stay till we’re finished here. Or else.”
“You — you kidnapped them?”
“At last the penny drops,” Vyland sneered. “Sure we kidnapped them.”
“You and Royale?”
“Me and Royale.”
“You admit it? A federal and capital offence — kidnapping — you freely and openly admit it. Is that it?”
“That’s it. Why shouldn’t we admit it?” Vyland blustered. But he had become suddenly uneasy. “So you’d better forget about the cops and any ideas you have about delivering us to them. Besides, how do you think you’re going to get us up the caisson and off the rig without being chopped into little pieces? I reckon you’re mad, Talbot.”
“The general’s wife and daughter,” I mused, as if I hadn’t heard him. “It wasn’t a bad idea. You’d have let them go in the end, you couldn’t afford not to, it would have been the Lindbergh case ten times over had you tried anything. On the other hand you knew the general wouldn’t start anything afterwards: it would only be his word against yours, and up your sleeve you always carried the trump card — Royale. As long as Royale walked the face of America the general would never speak. This whole operation probably cost him a cool million — for the general a bagatelle compared to the value of wife and children. A sweet set-up.”
“Correct. I hold the trumps, Talbot.”
“Yes,” I said absently. “And every day, just on noon, you sent a coded telegram — in the general’s company code — to your watchdogs who kept an eye on Mrs. Ruthven and Jean. You see, Vyland, I even know the daughter’s name. And if the coded telegram didn’t arrive in twenty-four hours they had instructions to shift them to another place, a safer hide-out. Atlanta wasn’t too safe, I’m afraid.”
Vyland’s face was grey, his hands beginning to shake again. His voice came as a strained whisper. “What are you saying? ”
“I only caught on twenty-four hours ago,” I replied. “We’d been blind — we’d been checking every outgoing cable from Marble Springs for weeks, but forgot all about the inland telegrams. When I did catch on, a message to Judge Mollison from me — through Kennedy, remember that fight we had, I slipped it to him then — started off what must have been the most concentrated and ruthless man hunt for years. The F.B.I. would stop at nothing, not since Jablonsky got his, and obviously they stopped at nothing. Mrs. Ruthven and Jean are safe and well — your friends, Vyland, are under lock and key and talking their heads off to beat the rap.” This last bit was guesswork, but I thought my guess wouldn’t be so far out.
“You’re making this up,” Vyland said huskily. Fear was back in his face and he was clutching at straws. “You’ve been under guard all day and——”
“If you were up in the radio shack and could see the state of that creature of yours who tried to stop me from putting through a radio call to the sheriff, you wouldn’t say that. It was Kennedy who gave Royale here his sore head. It was Kennedy who dragged him inside the room and kept on making those calculations on the papers on my desk while I went up to attend to things. You see, I didn’t dare move till they were free. But they are free.”
I looked at the grey and stricken and hunted face and looked away again. It wasn’t a pretty sight. The time had come to get back, I had found out all I wanted to know, got all the evidence I would ever want. I opened up a circuit box, unbuttoned and repositioned four wires, closed the box again and pulled the first of the four electro-magnetic releases for the lead shot ballast.
It worked. Two clouds of grey pellets showered mistily by the side observation windows and disappeared into the black mud on the seabed. It worked, but the lightening of the weight made no difference, the bathyscaphe didn’t budge .
I pulled the second switch, emptied the second pair of containers: still we remained immovable. We were sunk pretty deep into that mud, how deep I didn’t know, but this had never happened before on tests. I sat down to work out if there was any factor I had forgotten, and now that the strain was over the pain was back in my shoulder and mouth and I wasn’t thinking so well any more. I removed the button from between my teeth and absent-mindedly placed it in a pocket.