‘Yessir!’ gasped Dutt, ‘yessir — I’ll be there with you!’
But by that time Gently was gone.
It was a hummocky bit of paddock separating the race-course from the lane to ‘Windy Tops’ and Gently, past his best sprint years, found it very heavy going. At the far side was a scrubby thorn fence in which he had to find a gap. Nits, frisking along at his side, went over it like an Olympic hurdler.
‘You get back, m’lad!’ panted Gently, ‘there’ll be trouble up there!’
‘You going to take him away!’ chuckled Nits. ‘I want to see you take him away!’
‘You stop down here and you’ll get a grandstand view!’
‘I want to see — I want to see!’
There was no discouraging him. Gently ploughed on up the slope of the cliff. By the time he reached the gates of ‘Windy Tops’ he was glad of the breather offered by a pause to reconnoitre and Nits, entering into the spirit of the thing, gave up his leaping and frisking, and slid away like an eel behind the cover of some rhododendron bushes. Not a sound had come from the house. Not a vestige of life was to be seen at any of the windows. Only the front door stood half ajar, as though whoever was within didn’t mean to be there for very long.
Keeping his breathing in check, Gently moved swiftly across to the threshold. Inside he could hear voices coming from somewhere at the back. Silently he worked his way down the hall towards the baize-covered door of the kitchen, which was shut, and pressed himself close to it, listening…
‘No, Peachey,’ came Louey’s voice at its softest and silkiest, ‘we don’t seem able to find that money anywhere, do we?’
‘B-but boss… he give me the message,’ came Peachey’s whine in reply.
There was the sound of a cupboard door being opened and shut, and something else moved.
‘Quite empty, Peachey… not a dollar-note to be seen.’
‘Boss, he t-took it with him… you don’t think I’d l-lie?’
‘Lie, Peachey?’ Louey’s laugh sounded careless and easy. ‘You wouldn’t lie to me, now, would you?’
‘N-no, boss, of course I wouldn’t!’
‘And you wouldn’t tell tales, Peachey, would you… not even to save your own worthless skin?’
A confused noise was Peachey’s answer to this sally.
Louey’s laugh came again. ‘You see, Peachey, we all have our value, looked at from a certain point of view. I have mine. Streifer has his. Stratilesceul had a value too, but unfortunately for himself he lost it. And now the pressing problem of the moment, Peachey, is your value… you do see what I’m driving at?’
A strangled sound suggested that Peachey saw it very plainly.
‘Yes, Peachey, I thought you would. I don’t want to be unkind, you know. I’m prepared to listen to any defence you may have to offer, but it seems to me that there can’t be any real doubt about the matter… doesn’t it to you? Here am I, on whom the forces of liberation in this country depend, and there are you, a small and expendable unit. Now I could betray you, Peachey, and that might be wrong. But if you were to betray me, that would be a crime comparable to the crime of Judas. You understand?’
‘But boss — I never — I didn’t — I told them I wouldn’t!’
‘ SILENCE!’ thundered Louey’s voice, stripped in a moment of its silky veneer. ‘Do you think I didn’t know, you miserable worm, do you think you can lift a finger without my knowing it?’
There was a pause and then he continued in his former voice: ‘I like to make these matters clear. I tried to make them clear to Stratilesceul. I’m not a criminal, Peachey, in any real sense of the word. There’s only one crime and that’s the crime against the forces of liberation: when we, the liberators, proceed against that crime, we are guiltless of blood, we are the instruments of true justice. So I am not killing you, Peachey, from hatred or even personal considerations… I am killing you in the name of Justice, in the name of Society!’
‘… No!’ came Peachey’s terror-stricken cry. ‘Boss… you can’t… you can’t!’
‘Oh but I can, Peachey.’
‘No boss — no! It’s a mistake — I never told them nothing!’
‘And no more you shall!’ came Louey’s voice savagely, ‘this is it, Peachey — this is the tool for traitors!’
Gently hurled open the door. ‘Drop it!’ he barked, ‘drop that knife, Louey!’
The big man spun round suddenly from the sink, over which he was holding the helpless Peachey. His grey eyes were blazing with a malevolent light, strange, fey. ‘You!’ he articulated with a sort of hiss, ‘… you!’
‘Yes, Louey — me. Now drop that knife and take your hands off Peach.’
‘… You!’ hissed Louey again, and the light in his eyes seemed to deepen.
‘Stop him!’ whimpered Peachey, ‘oh, God, he’s going to do for me!’ And with the energy of despair he twisted himself out of Louey’s grip and made a dive for the back door, which fortunately for him was only bolted. But Louey made no move to restrain him. His eyes remained fixed on Gently.
‘Let him go!’ he purred, ‘he won’t talk… I’m not so sure now he ever would have done, are you, Chief Inspector Gently?’
‘He’ll talk,’ retorted Gently, ‘there’s a limit to what you can do with a knife. Now drop it and put your hands up. It’s time you started thinking of your defence.’
By way of answer Louey let the knife slide down his hand, so that now he was holding it by the tip of the blade. ‘My defence, Chief Inspector Gently; you are looking at it now. Isn’t it a pity? I’ve let a miserable parasite like Peachey escape and in his place I must execute a man of your… attainments. Isn’t — it — a — pity?’
With the last four words he had reached back with his gigantic arm and was now leisurely taking aim at Gently’s heart. There was no cover to dive for. There was no prospect of a quick back jump through the door. The knife was poised and on a hair-trigger, it would reach its mark long before Gently could move to evade it. And then, at the crucial split second, the knife disappeared — one instant it was flashing in Louey’s hand, the next it was spirited away as though by a supernatural agency.
‘You take him!’ piped the delirious voice of Nits through the back door, ‘ha, ha, ha! You take him — you take him!’
With a roar of anger Louey recovered himself and leaped at Gently, but it was too late. A hand that felt like a steel bar smashed into the side of his throat and he collapsed on the floor, choking and gasping, a pitiful, helpless wreck of humanity. Gently snapped handcuffs on the nerveless wrists.
‘It had to come, Louey,’ he said grimly, ‘there has to be an end to this sort of thing.’
‘Ha, ha, ha!’ giggled Nits, dancing around them and brandishing Louey’s knife, ‘we’ll take him away now — we’ll take him away!’
Gently put out his hand for the knife. It was a curious weapon. The hilt and blade were one piece of steel, the former heavy, the latter relatively light and narrow. On each side of the hilt was engraved the mark of the TSK along with a number of Egyptian hieroglyphics.
‘Double-edged, about three-quarters of an inch wide,’ mused Gently, ‘it couldn’t be any other… it would have to be this one.’
Louey struggled up into a sitting position. He was still gagging for breath, his face was grey. He stared at Gently, at the knife, at the discreet links shackling his enormous wrists. ‘No!’ he whispered hoarsely, ‘you weren’t big enough… you just weren’t big enough!’
Gently nodded sadly and slipped the knife into his pocket. ‘It’s you who weren’t big enough, Louey… that was the mistake. We’re none of us big enough… we’re just very little people.’
Half the Starmouth Borough Police Force seemed to be congregating in the garden as Gently led Louey out. There was the super with Copping and three or four plain-clothes men, at least ten constables and the complete Special Branch outfit. Dutt came panting up the steps, relief showing in his face at the sight of the handcuffs and an unmarked Gently.
‘You’re all right then, sir — he never give you any trouble?’
Gently shrugged faintly. ‘About the routine issue…’
‘And Peachey, sir — you got him away safe and sound?’
‘Safe and sound, Dutt… all Peachey had was a scare.’
‘By thunder, Gently, you’ve pulled off a splendid piece of work!’ exclaimed the super, striding across. ‘I have to admit it — I thought you were going to fall down over this fellow. I suppose it’s unnecessary to ask whether you’ve got the goods on him?’
‘I got him red-handed… he was going to stab Peach with a TSK patent executioner’s knife. I think we’ll find it
