‘Well, well.’ MacAlpine looked at his watch. ‘Better hurry. We have to leave for the reception in half an hour.’
‘I’m tired. I’m going to have a shower, two hours’ sleep, then some dinner. I’ve come here for the Grand Prix, not for mingling with high society.’
‘You definitely refuse to come?’
‘I refused to come last time out too. Setting a precedent, if you like.’
‘It’s obligatory, you know.’
‘In my vocabulary, obligation and compulsion are not the same things.’
‘There are three or four very important people present tonight especially just to see you.’
‘I know.’
MacAlpine paused before speaking, ‘How do you know. Only Alexis and I know.’
‘Mary told me.’ Harlow turned and walked away.
‘Well.’ Dunnet pressed his lips tightly together. the arrogant young bastard. Walking in here to tell us he’s just equalled the lap record without even trying. Thing is, I believe him. That’s why he stopped by, isn’t it?’
To tell me that he’s still the best in the business? Partly. Also to tell me to stuff my bloody reception. Also to tell me that he’ll speak to Mary whether I like it or not. And the final twist, to let me know -that Mary has no secrets from him. Where’s that damned daughter of mine?’
‘This should be interesting to see.’
‘What should be?’
‘To see if you can break a heart twice.’
MacAlpine sighed and slumped even farther back in his arm-chair. ‘I suppose you’re right, Alexis, I suppose you’re right. Mind you, I’d still like to knock their two damned young heads together.’
Harlow, clad in a white bath-robe and obviously recently showered, emerged from the bathroom and opened up his wardrobe. He brought out a fresh suit then reached up to a shelf above it. Clearly, he didn’t find what he expected to and his eyebrows lifted. He looked in a cupboard with similarly negative results. He stood in the middle of the room, pondering, then smiled widely.
He said softly: ‘Well, well, well Here we go again. Clever devils.’
From the still-smiling expression on his face, it was clear that Harlow didn’t believe his own words. He lifted the mattress, reached under, removed a flat half-bottle of scotch, examined and replaced it. From there he went into the bathroom, removed the cistern lid, lifted out a bottle of Glenfiddich malt, checked the level-it was about three-parts full, replaced it in a certain position and then put the cistern lid back in place. This he left slightly askew. He returned to his bedroom, put on a light grey suit and was just adjusting his tie when he heard the sound of a heavy engine below. He switched out the light, pulled back the curtains, opened his window and peered out cautiously.
A large coach was drawn up outside the hotel entrance and the various drivers, managers, senior mechanics and journalists who were headed for the official reception were filing aboard. Harlow checked to see that all those whose absence that evening he considered highly desirable were. among those present, and they were — Dunnet, Tracchia, Neubauer, Jacobson and MacAlpine, the last with a very pale and downcast Mary clinging to his arm. The door closed and the bus moved off into the night.
Five minutes later, Harlow sauntered up to the reception desk. Behind it was the very pretty young girl he’d ignored on the way in. He smiled widely at her — his colleagues wouldn’t have believed it — and she, recovering quickly from the shock of seeing the other side of Harlow’s nature, smiled in return, almost blushing in embarrassed pleasure. For those outside immediate racing circles, Harlow was still -the world’s number one.
Harlow said : ‘Good evening.’
‘Good evening, Mr. Harlow, sir.’ The smile faded. ‘I’m afraid you’ve just missed your bus.’
‘I have my own private transport.’
The smile came back on again. ‘Of course, Mr. Harlow. How silly of me. Your red Ferrari. Is there something —’
‘Yes, please. I have four names here—MacAlpine, Neubauer, Tracchia and Jacobson. I wonder if you could give me their room numbers?’
‘Certainly, Mr. Harlow. But I’m afraid those gentlemen have all just left.’
‘I know. I waited until they had left.’
‘I don’t understand, sir. ‘
‘I just want to slip something under their doors. An old pre-race custom.’
‘You race drivers and your practical jokes.’ She’d almost certainly never seen a race driver until that evening but that didn’t prevent her from giving him a look of roguish understanding. The numbers you want are 202, 208, 204 and 206.’
That’s in the order of the names I gave you?’
‘Yes, sir.’
Thank you.’ Harlow touched a finger to his lips. ‘Now, not a word.’
‘Of course not, Mr. Harlow.’ She smiled conspiratorially at him as he turned away. Harlow had a sufficiently realistic assessment of his own fame to appreciate that she would talk for months about this brief encounter: just as long as she didn’t talk until that weekend was over.
He returned to his own room, took a movie camera from a suitcase, unscrewed its back, carefully scratching the dull metallic black as he did so, removed the plate and pulled out a small miniaturized camera not much larger than a packet of cigarettes. He pocketed -this, re-screwed in place the back plate of the movie camera, replaced it in his suitcase and looked thoughtfully at the small canvas bag of tools that lay there. Tonight, he would not require those: where he was going he knew where to find all the tools and flashlights he wanted. He took the bag with him and left the room.
He moved along the corridor to room 202 — MacAlpine’s room. Unlike MacAlpine, Harlow did not have to resort to devious means to obtain hotel room keys — he had some excellent sets of keys himself. He selected one of these and with the fourth key the door opened. He entered and locked the door behind him.
Having disposed of the canvas bag in the highest and virtually unreachable shelf in a wall wardrobe, Harlow proceeded to search the room thoroughly. Nothing escaped his scrutiny — MacAlpine’s clothing, wardrobes, cupboards, suitcases. Finally he came across a locked suitcase, so small as to be almost a brief-case, fastened with locks that were very strong and peculiar indeed. But Harlow also had a set of very small and peculiar keys. Opening the small suitcase presented no difficulty whatsoever.
The interior held a kind of small travelling office, containing as it did a mass of papers, including invoices, receipts, cheque-books and contracts: the owner of the Coronado team obviously served as his own accountant. Harlow ignored everything except an elastic-bound bunch of expired cheque-books. He flipped through those quickly then stopped and stared at the front few pages of one of the cheque-books where all the payments were recorded together. He examined all four recording pages closely, shook his head in evident disbelief, pursed his lips in a soundless whistle, brought out his miniature camera and took eight pictures, two of each page. This done, he returned everything as he had found it and left.
The corridor was deserted. Harlow moved down to 204 — Tracchia’s room — and used the same key to enter as he ‘had on MacAlpine’s door : hotel room keys have only marginal differences as they have to accommodate a master key: what Harlow had was, in fact, a master key.
As Tracchia had considerably fewer possessions than MacAlpine, the search was correspondingly easier. Again Harlow encountered another, but smaller, brief-case, the opening of which again provided him with the minimum of difficulty. There were but few papers inside and Harlow found little of interest among them except a thin book, bound in black and red, of what appeared to be a list of extremely cryptic addresses. Each address, if address it were, was headed by a single letter, followed by two or three wholly indecipherable lines of letters. It could have meant something: it could have meant nothing. Harlow hesitated, obviously in a state of indecision, shrugged, brought out his camera and photographed the pages. He left Tracchia’s room in as immaculate a condition as he had left MacAlpine’s.
Two minutes later in 208, Harlow, sitting on Neubauer’s bed with a brief-case on his lap, was no longer hesitating. The miniature camera clicked busily away: the thin black and red note-book he held in his hand was identical to the one he had found in Tracchia’s possession.
From there, Harlow moved on to the last of his four objectives — Jacobson’s room. Jacobson, it appeared, was either less discreet or less sophisticated than either Tracchia or Neubauer. He had two bank-books and when Harlow opened them he sat quite still. Jacobson’s income, it appeared from them, amounted to at least twenty times as much as he could reasonably expect to earn as a chief mechanic. Inside one of the books was a list of addresses, in plain English, scattered all over Europe. All those details Harlow faithfully recorded on his little camera. He replaced the papers in the case and the case in its original position and was on the point of leaving when he heard footsteps in the corridor. He stood, irresolute, until the footsteps came to a halt outside his door. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and was about to use it as a mask when a key turned in the lock. Harlow had time only to move swiftly and silently into a wardrobe, pulling the door quietly to behind him, when the corridor door opened and someone entered the room.