‘Watch your language,’ Harlow said absently. He drove some way in silence then sighed in resignation. ‘OK. But only if you promise to stay out of sight and keep safe.’
‘I’ll stay out of sight and keep safe.’
Harlow made to bite his upper lip and winced as he bit the gash in that lip. He looked in the rear mirror. Rory, now sitting on the back seat, was smiling with considerable satisfaction. Harlow shook his head in what might have been disbelief or despair or both.
Ten minutes later Harlow parked the car in an alleyway about three hundred yards away from the rue Georges Sand, packed all the equipment into a canvas bag, slung it over his shoulder and set off, accompanied by a Rory whose expression of complacency had now changed to one of considerable apprehension. Other factors apart, there was a sound enough reason for Rory’s nervousness. It was a bad night for the purposes Harlow had in mind. A full moon hung high in a cloudless starlit Riviera sky. The visibility was at least as good as it would have been on an overcast winter’s afternoon. The only difference was that moon-shadows are much darker.
Harlow and Rory were now pressed close into the shadow of one of the ten-foot high walls that surrounded the Villa Hermitage. Harlow examined the contents of the bag.
‘Now then. Rope, hook, tarpaulin, twine, insulated wire-cutters, chisels, first-aid box. Yes, the lot.’
‘What is that lot for, Mr. Harlow?’
‘First three for getting over that wall. Twine for tying things up or together, like thumbs. Wire-cutters for electric alarms —if I can find the wires. Chisels for opening things. First-aid box —well, you never know. Rory, will you kindly stop your teeth from chattering? Our friends inside could hear you forty feet away.’
‘I can’t help it, Mr. Harlow.’
‘Now, remember, you’re to stay here. The last people we want here are the police but if I’m not back in thirty minutes go to the phone box on the corner and tell them to come here at the double.’
Harlow secured the hook to the end of the rope. For once, the bright moonlight was of help. With his first upward cast the hook sailed over the branch of a tree within the grounds. He pulled cautiously until the hook engaged firmly round the branch, slung the white tarpaulin over his shoulder, climbed the few feet that were necessary, draped the tarpaulin over the broken glass embedded in the concrete, pulled himself farther up, sat gingerly astride and looked at the tree that had provided this convenient branch: the lower branches extended to within four feet of the ground.
Harlow glanced down at Rory. the bag.’
The bag came sailing upwards. Harlow caught it and dropped it on the ground inside. He took the branch in his hands, swung inwards and was on the ground in five seconds.
He passed through a small thicket of trees. Lights shone from the curtained windows of a ground floor room. The massive oaken door was shut and almost certainly bolted. In any event Harlow considered that a frontal entry was as neat a way as any of committing suicide. He approached the side of the house, keeping to shadows wherever possible. The windows on the ground floor offered no help – all were heavily barred. The back door, predictably, was locked: the ironic thought occurred to Harlow that the only skeleton keys which could have probably opened that door were inside that house.
He moved round to the other side of the house. He didn’t even bother looking at the barred lower windows. He looked upwards and his attention was at once caught and held by a window that was slightly ajar. Not much, perhaps three inches, but still ajar. Harlow looked around the grounds. About twenty yards away were a cluster of garden and potting sheds and a greenhouse. He headed resolutely in their direction.
Rory, meanwhile, was pacing up and down in the lane outside, continually glancing at the rope in what appeared to be an agony of indecision. Suddenly, he seized the rope and began to climb.
By the time he had dropped to the ground on the other side, Harlow had a ladder against the lower sill of the window and had reached the level of the window itself. He pulled out his torch and carefully examined both sides of the window. Both sides had what were clearly electrical wires stapled to the framework of the window. Harlow reached inside his bag, produced the wire-cutters, snipped both wires, lifted the sash high and passed inside.
Within two minutes he had established that there was no one on the upper floor. Canvas bag and unlit torch in his left hand, the silenced pistol in the other, he stealthily descended the stairs towards the hallway. Light streamed from a door that was slightly ajar and the sound of voices from inside, one of them a woman’s, carried very clearly. This room he temporarily ignored. He prowled round the ground floor ensuring that all the rooms were empty. In the kitchen, his torch located a set of steps leading down to the basement. Harlow descended those and played his torch round a concrete-floored, concrete-walled cellar. Four doors led off this cellar. Three of those looked perfectly normal: the fourth had two massive bolts and a heavy key such as one might expect to find in a medieval dungeon. Harlow slid the bolts, turned the key, passed inside, located and pressed a light switch.
Whatever it was, it was certainly no dungeon. It was a very modern and immaculately equipped laboratory although what precisely it was equipped to do was not immediately apparent. Harlow crossed to a row of aluminium containers, lifted the lid of one, sniffed the white powdery contents, wrinkled his nose in disgust and replaced the lid. As he left he passed by a wall telephone, obviously, from the dial, an external exchange one. He hesitated, shrugged and walked out, leaving the door open and the light on.
Rory, just at the precise moment when Harlow was mounting the steps from the cellar, was hidden in the deep shadow on the edge of the thicket of trees. From where he stood he could see both the front and the side of the house. His face held a considerable degree of apprehension, an apprehension that suddenly changed to something very close to fear.
A squat, powerfully built man, clad in dark trousers and a dark roll-neck pullover, had suddenly appeared from behind the back of the house. For a moment the man, the patrolling guard that Harlow hadn’t bargained for, stood stock-still, staring at the ladder propped against the wall. Then he started running towards the front door of the house. As if by magic two items had appeared in his hands — a large key and a very much larger knife.
Harlow stood in the hallway outside the occupied room, thoughtfully regarding the bar of light streaming from the partially opened door and listening to the sound of voices. He tightened the silencer on his gun, took two quick steps forward then violently smashed the door open with the sole of his right foot: the door all but parted company with its hinges.
There were five people inside the room. Three of them were curiously alike and might well have been brothers — heavy, well-suited, obviously prosperous men, black-haired and very swarthy. The fourth was a beautiful blonde girl. The fifth was Willi Neubauer. They stared as if mesmerized at Harlow who, with his bruised and battered face and silenced pistol, must have presented a less than friendly appearance.
Harlow said: the hands high, please.’
All five lifted their hands.
‘Higher. Higher.’
The five occupants of the room stretched their arms very high indeed.
‘What the devil does this mean, Harlow?’ Neubauer’s tone was intended to be harsh and demanding but it burred with the sharp edge of strain. ‘I come calling on friends -’
Harlow interrupted in an iron voice. The judge will have more patience with you than I have. Shut up!’
Took out!’ The almost panic-stricken scream was barely recognizable as Rory’s voice.
Harlow had the cat-like reflexes that befitted the outstanding Grand Prix driver of his time. He turned and fired in one movement. The dark man, who had been just about to start a vicious down-stroke, screamed in agony and stared in disbelief at his shattered hand. Harlow ignored him and had whirled back to face the others even before the dark man’s knife had struck the floor. One of the swarthy men had dropped his right hand and was reaching inside his jacket.
Harlow said encouragingly : ‘Go on.’
The swarthy man lifted his right hand very quickly indeed. Harlow stepped prudently to one side and gestured briefly with his gun towards the wounded man.
‘Join your friends.’ Moaning in pain, his left hand clutching his bleeding right, the dark man did so. Just then Rory entered the room.