George licked his dry lips. “Listen, just a minute…”
Cora put her hand on his knee. Her touch sent the blood pounding in his head. Words of caution died in his mouth.
“What is it?” Sydney asked.
“Nothing,” Cora said. “He’s fine, aren’t you, George?”
“Well, don’t mess about,” Sydney said. “This is serious. Now come on; let’s get it over.”
He got out of the car.
“We’re coming,” Cora said.
As Sydney moved away down the lane she fell against George, her hands pulling his head down to her open mouth. A suffocating desire engulfed him. They remained like that for some time, their mouths crushed together, and then Cora pushed him away and slid out of the car.
“Come,” she said.
As if hypnotized, George followed her. His heart hammered against his ribs and blood sang in his ears. He couldn’t think about Crispin. He couldn’t think of anything.
Cora held his arm. She was pulling him along. He couldn’t see, and his feet stumbled. Sweat dripped down his face. The air had gone dead. There was no movement in the trees; no wind, only a hot stillness that oppressed him. In the distance, thunder rumbled. A line of black clouds began to edge above the horizon.
“Quiet,” she said softly, and he could feel her trembling.
Sydney moved towards them out of the darkness.
“It’s all right,” he whispered. “He’s there, and alone.”
He went on ahead. Cora followed, seemingly able to see in the dark. She steered George through a gateway and tip an overgrown path. Then suddenly they came on a small bungalow. One window was open, and light streamed from it into the garden.
The three of them stopped abruptly. Thunder crashed not far away, startling George, so that he clutched Cora’s arm. Her muscles felt hard under his hand, as if she were keyed up, her nerves at breaking point.
They edged forward so that they could look into the room. Crispin, in a blue and white flowered dressing-gown, was sitting at a table. A cigarette dangled from his lips; he was writing on a pad of notepaper. A lawyer’s briefcase lay half open at his elbow. It appeared to be bulging with pound notes.
George shivered. The sight of all that money frightened him even more than the thought of bursting in and assaulting this strange-looking man. He glanced at Sydney. He could just make out his features in the light from the window. He was hissing between his teeth, a frightening look of pent-up hatred in his eyes.
A spear thrust of blue-white lightning split the sky, was followed in a few seconds by a tremendous clap of thunder. George ducked instinctively. A drop of ice-cold water fell on his hot face. It began to rain.
Cora jerked at his arm. Sydney was already creeping towards the front door. In a kind of dream, George followed him. As before, when they had burst into Robinson’s room, he suddenly felt extraordinarily at ease. This was, of course, just another of his fantasies. George Fraser, millionaire gangster, was again on the job. It couldn’t really be happening to poor old George, the lonely, catloving hook tout. Not this: this was too fantastic. It would be all right. In a few minutes Leo would come in and jump up on his bed. Ella would come in with his tea. There was no need to get alarmed, or for his heart to pound like this. He might just as well enjoy this fantasy. What the devil was this little runt of a Sydney doing, leading the way? George Fraser always led the way. It was too late now. Sydney had opened the front door. They were all in the room now, looking at Crispin.
This was exciting! Crispin was behaving just as George imagined he would behave. He had turned green with terror.
George flexed his great muscles and scowled at him.
“Hello, Crispin,” Sydney said.
Crispin put a hand on the leather briefcase. He didn’t move his body and he didn’t say anything.
“Get up, Crispin,” Sydney said. “I’ve had to wait a long time to get even with you. We have you now where we want you.”
Slowly Crispin rose to his feet; even then he couldn’t find his voice.
“I’ve brought a whip,” Cora said, polite as a tailor at a fitting. She pulled the whip from her trouser leg and laid it on the table.
“We’ll start with that,” Sydney said.
Cora zipped open her bag casually and took out the Luger.
A faint click sounded through the room. It was immediately lost in a clap of thunder.
“Here, George,” she said, and pushed the gun into his hand.
George looked at Crispin. Crispin looked at him and then at the gun. His face seemed to fall to pieces. He began to back slowly away.
Oddly enough, the heavy Luger felt good in George’s hands. He felt extraordinarily elated to see the terror in Crispin’s face.
Crispin, white, his mouth working, backed against the wall. He looked lonely.
George bore down on him.
“Don’t…” Crispin said, and squirmed against the wall like a beetle pinned alive to a hoard.
“Get your hands up,” George said, and rammed the gun hard into Crispin’s chest.
A zigzag of brilliant lightning streaked through the window. Thunder sounded like a trunk being moved in an attic. Above the crash of the thunder came another sound—a sharp crack, like the breaking of dry wood magnified many times. A wisp of smoke rose in the air: it smelt of gunpowder.
In that moment of sound George felt the gun in his hand kick like a live thing, and it jumped out of his hand onto the floor. He became conscious of two things: a tight, deep- throated scream from Cora, and a curious red mess on the wall where Crispin had been standing.
Slowly, his eyes travelled from the red stain down the wall, past the sideboard, to the floor. Crispin lay huddled up, as if the bones in his legs had been broken. There was a red stain on the front of his white and blue dressing-gown.
A voice came to George, as if someone were shouting in a tunnel. He heard the voice, but the words meant nothing to him. It’s all right, he said to himself. This has happened to you hundreds of times before. All you’ve got to do is to hang on and wait. You’ll wake up in a moment. Someone was shaking him. A strident voice was shrieking at him. "You fool! You fool! You stupid, bloody fool!" Something hard hit him in the face, and he shivered. Something inside his head exploded into fire and darkness, and just before the darkness he felt a sharp flash of nausea. He staggered, clutched at nothing, recovered his balance and groped with blind fingers.
The shock left him after a while.
Cora was speaking again. She was speaking softly.
“You did it,” she was saying. “We don’t touch murder. That’s something we don’t stand for. We didn’t tell you to shoot him. We only wanted you to frighten him.”
He could see her eyes, slate-grey, hard, frightened. Her face was misty. He looked at Sydney. He wavered before George like weeds in a fast-moving river.
Then—snap!—everything became sharp and clear. Cora and Sydney seemed to spring to life, sharp-etched, like a film that has been suddenly correctly focused.
He stared down at Crispin, caught his breath and shied away.
“No!” he said huskily. “The gun wasn’t loaded! I didn’t do it! I didn’t do it!”
They watched him, cold, pitiless and accusing.
“It’s your mess,” Sydney said, his voice flat and metallic. “Keep away from us. We don’t want you. We don’t touch murder.”
George wasn’t listening to him. He was looking at Cora. She wouldn’t desert him: “I don’t cheat,” she had said. “I’ll be very nice to you tonight—promise.” She’d promised, hadn’t she? She couldn’t desert him now. She must know that this had nothing to do with him