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
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.
13
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
