He made the offer with a tight, strained urgency and fevered eyes, sure now that it would be refused, and sure that he could get two of the enemy out of the house on this fools’ errand. He ventured one brief flicker of his eyes in Bunty’s direction; she knew, she was on his heels now, close and eager.
Fleet made up his mind. It might be true, and it would take no more than a quarter of an hour or so to put it to the test.
“Here, come to the desk. Draw me a map, and make it good. Direction and distance from the foot of this path you talk about—the lot.” He watched Luke stoop to rummage in the top drawer of the desk for pen and writing-pad, tear off the top sheet of the pad, and without hesitation begin to sketch in the jetty and the approach angle of the cliff path. Satisfied, Fleet turned to Skinner, who was lounging against the wall by the door, one shoulder hunched as a prop. “You go down and fish up this parcel. Take Con with you. And give me that Colt, just in case.”
For one moment his back was turned squarely on Luke, and his bulk partly hid the desk from the eyes of the others. For once Luke could move a hand in the shelter of his own body, and not be observed. The large, smooth granite pebble, veined and beautiful, that his friends used as a paperweight, lay close to his right sleeve. He closed his hand over it and drew it towards him, sliding it quickly into the pocket of his coat. By the time Fleet swung round on him again he was scribbling measurements on his sketch-map, and turned to show his hands otherwise empty and innocent as he handed it over.
“There you are. X marks the spot where the treasure’s buried.”
He stayed where he was as they examined it, his back to the desk. It was a good place, if they’d let him keep it. It meant that when the moment came he could draw the two remaining armed men to this side of the room to deal with him, and leave Bunty a clear run to the doorway. The lame man upstairs, edging anxiously and audibly from front window to rear window and back again, would never get down the stairs in time to intercept her.
“Seems straightforward enough,” said Skinner, memorising the lay-out. “Better get that big torch out of the Riley, Con, this one here’s giving out.”
Without a gun in them, Con’s hands were discontented and at a loss what to do with themselves. Only the weight and solidity of the Colt had held them still. They had the twitches now. Maybe Con was already hooked on one of the hard drugs, maybe he was only half-way there on LSD. Fleet himself was watching him, as the boy left the room, with a considering coldness, a practical speculation. Con might not last very long in Fleet’s employ; but he hadn’t become a liability yet.
Luke strained his ears for the sound of the front door opening and closing on Con’s exit, opening and closing again as he came back with a large, rubber-cased torch. The latch clicked into place lightly on his return, and he came on without any delay into the living-room. The bolts were not shot, the lock no longer functioned; the way out was open.
“And who,” Fleet asked suddenly, settling back in his chair, “has got the other gun—his gun?”
Skinner turned in the kitchen doorway. “I have. Want it?”
“Yes, hand it over.” Fleet laid down the Colt close beside him on the edge of the table, and took Pippa’s Liliput in his hands. No doubt he had supplied it in the first place, while he still half-trusted her. “That’s all. Go on, get on with it.”
Then there were four of them left in the room. They heard the receding footsteps cross the kitchen, heard the outer door open and close, and for a moment or two faint sounds still reached them, dropping away down the first steps of the path. Bunty sat erect and rigid, her eyes fixed on Fleet. Luke quietly turned the chair round from the desk and sat down there; and no one ordered him back to join Bunty in the window embrasure. So much gained. Two ways to aim and shoot now, instead of one.
Fleet had pulled a handful of paper tissues from his pocket, and was polishing idly at the Liliput, his hands at work almost absent-mindedly, filling in time by getting on with the next job while he waited. His eyes studied Luke thoughtfully across the room, with the detached assurance of a practised mathematician solving a routine problem.
Or an experienced undertaker measuring a potential client for his coffin?
Bunty had been watching the active fingers for several seconds before their movements abruptly clicked into focus for her, and made blinding sense. Her heart lurched and turned in her with the shock of realisation. Suddenly she knew what had been lying there all the while beneath the surface manœuvrings of that tortuous mind, she knew what kind of bargain it was that Fleet had struck with his prisoners, and why he wanted Luke unbruised and unbattered. Once he got his hands on the money the whole gang would pack up and get out of here, yes; but not until they’d staged a second and less fallible tableau for the police to discover when they finally caught up. A murdered girl upstairs, a girl who would eventually be traced back to Comerbourne; in the garage the car for which the Midshire police had been putting out calls all day; and down here in the living-room another victim, some woman the fugitive had picked up in his flight, perhaps intending to escape abroad with her, only to despair and put an end to her here, before—last act of all—putting a bullet through his own head and dying beside her. The experts would easily demonstrate that the same gun had killed all three, the gun the police would find in dead Luke Tennant’s grip when they came. There would be no other prints on it but his; those softly polishing fingers were busy making sure of that now. She watched them in fascination. They had already finished with the barrel, wiped the grip clean, taken care of the trigger-guard, and now they were twisting another tissue neatly about the butt.
There remained only the trigger. There was no point in wiping that, of course; not until afterwards.
CHAPTER XII
« ^ »
So now she knew the score, whether Luke knew it or not, and they had nothing left to lose. She had perhaps two minutes or so to make up her mind. When he starts something, she asked herself, do I run or don’t I? Things are changed now, this is a life and death matter whatever I do. Have we a chance of getting out of here together? She considered that with the searching eye of one who has been through death once already, and is no longer flustered by its proximity, and told herself with detachment that the answer must be no. And if I run, have I a sporting chance of getting clear alone? Yes, I believe I might have. But have I any chance at all of reaching the police, or any other reliable help, and bringing them back here in time to save Luke? Over that she hesitated, but in the end the answer was that it might be betting against the odds, but it still might come off. With one of the victims lost, with a witness at large who could identify them, they might scrap the whole plan and think it wisest to get out, leave Luke alive, and cut their losses.
Do I run, then? Yes, she told herself, I run. On balance it seems the sanest thing to do, for both of us.
There were snags, of course, in Fleet’s design, but he couldn’t be expected to know about all of them, and in any case he would take the small risk involved as a natural gamble. There was the broken lock on the front door. Presumably his plan envisaged that break-in as being attributed to Luke on the run; he didn’t know that the key had its hiding-place right there on the spot, and that Luke was admitted to the secret, and had no need to break locks. The Alports would testify to that, and the point might stick in some Scots policeman’s craw, like a husk in porridge, and refuse to be dislodged. She knew it would have stuck in George’s. The shadow of the unknown other person would be there to be found, once the possibility was acknowledged. It is very difficult to erase yourself completely from the scene where you have once been, the imprint of your presence and your acts remains as a faint outline still, an indentation, never entirely smoothed out.