More Deadly Than The Male (21 page)

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.

"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—s
nap!—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

He went to her.

"Cora!" he said. "I didn't do it! You know I didn't. The gun wasn't loaded. I can prove it. The cartridges are at home. There's twenty-five of them. That's all I had. They haven't been touched! Don't you understand? They haven't been touched!"

Her mouth curled in loathing.

"You stupid, creeping fool!" she cried. "I hate you! Look what you've done! Don't ever dare come near me again!" And she struck him across the face with her clenched fist.

Then they went out and left him.

He stood looking at Crispin; he was numbed with horror. Slowly he bent and picked up the Luger. It smelt strongly of gunpowder. He examined it. The safety catch had been moved. He pressed it down. There came a faint click. His memory moved, groped, floundered. There had been the same clicking sound when Cora had given him the gun. He remembered now. Had she deliberately released the safety catch? He didn't think it likely. He didn't know. His finger curled round the trigger. The hammer instantly snapped down. He snapped the hammer down three times before it dawned on him that someone had fixed the trigger mechanism so that the gun would fire at the slightest touch. Even then he was too terrified to think much of the discovery.

Rain beat in through the open window, and the curtains ballooned into the room as waves of hot air disturbed them. Thunder crackled.

George stood still, listening He heard a motor-car start up. It seemed to be moving at a great speed, and its sound quickly died away. He found himself looking at the table and noting with stupefied fascination that the briefcase full of money was no longer there.

George opened his eyes. The room was shadowy, but comfortingly familiar. The faint dawn light edged round the blind. It was early.

Although his body ached, and there was a feeling of lassitude in his limbs, his brain was clear and awake. He raised his head and glanced at his wristwatch. It was half past five. He lay back again and stared up at the ceiling, his mind crawling with alarm. He must avoid panic. He must relax and go over the whole business carefully and calmly. If he thought enough about it, got it into its right perspective, there must be a way out. The trouble was that he wasn't very good at thinking, nor was he very good at keeping calm, nor, of course, had he killed a man before.

He sat up in bed and deliberately turned the pillow, patted it and lay down again. By this simple act—something that anyone would do—he hoped that he would recapture a feeling of security. He adjusted the sheet under his chin and moved his legs. The bed felt warm and comfortable. The little black cloud of panic that had begun to edge over his brain receded. It would be all right, he told himself, if he kept calm.

He closed his eyes, and immediately Crispin's crumpled body in the bloodstained dressing-gown swam into his mind. He started up, his fists gripping the sheet. This wouldn't do, he thought, and forced himself to lie down again. 

It took some time before he could trust himself to think. But he knew that he could not for long avoid facing the facts. He had killed a man. Now he must make plans. He had no idea what plans he had to make, but he couldn't lie in bed for the rest of his days. He had to decide what he was going to do. The easiest way, of course, would be to go to the police and tell them everything. That would shift the responsibility from him to them. They couldn't do anything to him. It had been an accident. He could prove that it had been an accident. The cartridge must have been in the breech for a long time. George frowned. No, that couldn't be right, because he had pulled the trigger many times, liking the sound of the sharp snap of the hammer If the cartridge had been in the breech it would have been fired long ago. Then how did the cartridge get into the breech? He had twenty-five cartridges, but he had never put one of them into the magazine. He had been most careful about that. He was so sure about this that he began to consider whether it was his gun that had fired the fatal shot. Perhaps someone lurking outside had fired through the open window. Then he remembered how the gun had smelt of gunpowder, and his mind again began to crawl with alarm.

Someone must have put a cartridge into the gun. That could be the only explanation. Someone had also fixed the trigger mechanism. He would tell the police. It wasn't his business to say who did it. All he had to do was to show them the box of cartridges, and they could see at a glance that none of them was missing. Surely that would prove his innocence?

He looked at the dressing-table across the room and then got out of bed. He opened the drawer and took out the small wooden box of cartridges; then he got back into bed again, holding the box tightly in his hand. He mustn't lose this box, he told himself. His life depended on it. That seemed an exaggerated statement to make, but it was true. His life did depend on it.

He'd go to the police and explain He would open the box and show them the tight-fitting cartridges. He took the lid off the box. One cartridge was missing. He looked at the empty space for a long time and then he put the box very carefully on the table by his bed.

He lay back on his pillow and began to weep, weak with hysterical fear. He had known all along that a cartridge would be missing. It was all part of this ghastly nightmare: this web that was inexorably creeping round him, but he had tried to make himself believe that there was still a loophole of escape.

It was some time before he began to think again. Now his brain moved in quick darts, snatching at anything that could sustain hope.

He didn't arrive at any conclusion, and he knew he wouldn't arrive at any conclusion until he had controlled the panic that was gripping his heart and his mind.

Somehow one of the cartridges that belonged to him had got into the gun. How? Who did it?

His mind darted to Sydney. Sydney . . . Well, yes, he could have taken a cartridge from the box when he had sneaked the Luger from George's drawer while George had been shaving. It was just the sort of sly thing that Sydney would do. Then, while Cora and he had been at the movies, Sydney could have fixed the trigger mechanism and put the cartridge in the breech. Cora knew, of course. It was obvious. That was why she had insisted that George should leave the gun on the mantelpiece when they went to the movies. It was there for Sydney, who was waiting for them to go. It also explained why Cora had insisted on carrying the gun when they set off for Copthome.

"I'm your gun moll," she had said, and she had kissed him. He thought of Judas, and remembered how shocked he had been when, as a child, he had read of the betrayal. The same sense of shock returned.

Well, he was getting on. He now knew how the cartridge had been put in the gun and how the trigger mechanism had been fixed. Cora had put the finishing touch to the trap. Just before she had given him the gun she had deliberately slipped back the safety catch. He remembered distinctly hearing the soft little click as the catch snapped hack. It was almost as if she and Sydney had planned the murder of Crispin.

"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."

Then why had they fixed the gun like that?

George rubbed his sweating face with his hand. There was something wrong. He had had a feeling all along that there was something wrong, but he had been so besotted with Cora that he had not heeded his own uneasiness.

Begin at the beginning, he said to himself. The telephone booth at Joe's. That started it.

"It's a club in Mortimer Street, not far from you. They're not on the blower, otherwise I'd've rung 'em," Sydney had said.

But they had been on the blower. He had seen for himself the telephone booth in the Club.

Sydney must have known that. But if he hadn't lied about the telephone, there would have been no reason for George to go to Joe's and leave a message for Cora. And that would have meant that he would never have met her, never have fallen in love with her, never have been a besotted fool and never have allowed himself to be persuaded to commit murder.

The more he thought about it, the plainer it became. The story about the key and Cora not being able to get into the flat had been part of the plot. It was so simple that it had never crossed his mind that he was walking into a trap. 

What devils these two were! The trouble they had taken to trap him into murder. He remembered the briefcase full of money. There must have been five or six hundred pounds in that case. That was the motive, of course! They had trapped him into killing Crispin so that they could steal the money! He sat up in bed, his eyes wild. Then the scene in the restaurant had been part of the plot. Cora had deliberately staged that business to fool him into believing they had no other motive in visiting Crispin but for revenge. And they had fooled him. Was it possible that she had allowed herself to be flogged like that just to fool him? There was no doubt that she had been flogged. He had heard her shrieks and had seen the marks. The red, bruised, broken skin was something you couldn't fake. Had she really accepted such a beating in order to provide a false motive just to fool him.