interested party to check with the power station. Also gave names and addresses of hostages and asked all interested parties to contact their relatives to check.’
Dunne was calm. ‘No more than what you expected. Your phone must be ringing constantly at the moment. Any threats?’
‘None. Just thought he’d let us know and give us time to consider the implications.’
‘Aaron say when the news is being released?’
‘Be an hour at least. TV and radio stations are jittery as hell. They don’t know whether it’s a hoax, or not, and they don’t want to appear the biggest fools in the West. Also, even if it were true, they’re not sure whether they’d be contravening national security regulations. Personally I’ve never heard of any such regulations. They’re apparently waiting confirmation and clearance from the AEC. If they get it there’ll be a simultaneous State-wide release at eleven.’
‘I see. Well, it gives me plenty of time to get a man around to your Peggy.’
I’d much appreciate that. In the circumstances, most people would have forgotten all about a mere teenager.’
‘I told you. I have one. She doesn’t think she’s there at all. You have your car?’ Ryder nodded. ‘If you drop me off at my place I’ll get hold of San Diego and have a couple of men assigned to the job in ten minutes. No sweat.’ Dunne became thoughtful. ‘You won’t be able to say that about the citizens of this State tomorrow. They’ll be sweating buckets. Clever lad, this Morro. Mustn’t underestimate him. He’s craftily reversed the old maxim of better the devil you know than the devil you don’t. Now it’s a case of worse the devil you don’t know than the devil you do. He’ll have everyone in fits.’
‘Yes. The citizens of San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Sacramento all wondering who’s going to be the first for vaporization, and each hoping to hell it’s going to be one of the other three.’
‘You seriously think that, Sergeant?’
‘I haven’t really had time to think about anything. I’m just trying to imagine how other people would think. No, I don’t seriously think so. Clever men like our friend Morro have an objective in mind, and indiscriminate annihilation wouldn’t be any way to achieve that. Threats would be enough.’
‘That’s what I would think. But, then, it will take the public some time to realize — if they ever do — that we’re up against a person of that kind of cunning.’
‘And for such a person the mental climate is just right. For him, it couldn’t be better.’ Ryder ticked off his fingers. ‘We’ve had the bubonic plague bugaboo. Didn’t come to much, granted, but it scared half the people out of their wits. Then the swine fever — you could say exactly the same about that. Now practically everybody in the State, especially those on the coast, has this obsessive and — what’s the word? —’
‘Paranoid?’
‘I didn’t make college. This paranoid fear about when the next, the biggest and perhaps the last earthquake is going to come. And now this. The nuclear holocaust — we know, at least we think we know there isn’t going to be any such thing. But try convincing people of that.’ Ryder laid money on the table. ‘At least it should take their minds off earthquakes for the time being.’
Ryder met Jeff as arranged. They left their cars at the intersection and made their way on foot up Hawthorne Drive, a steep, narrow and winding lane lined with palms.
‘The houseboy’s back,’ Jeff said. ‘He came back alone, so I should imagine Raminoff’s either having his nose set or is being detained for the night in the casualty ward. The house-boy and his wife don’t sleep in the house — there’s a little bungalow at the foot of the garden. They’re both inside there, for the night, I take it. Up this bank here.’
They scrambled up a grassy bank, pulled themselves over a wall and parted some rose bushes. Donahure’s house was built round three sides of an oblong swimming pool, with the centre section, a long, low living-room, brightly illuminated. The night had turned cool and steam over the pool hung motionless in the still night air, but not so opaque as to prevent the watchers seeing Donahure, glass in hand, pacing heavily up and down. The sliding glass doors were opened wide.
‘Go down to the corner there,’ Ryder said. ‘Hide in the bushes. I’ll get as close as I can to that lounge. When I wave my arm attract his attention.’
They took up position, Jeff among the rose bushes, Ryder, on the other side of the pool, in the dark shadow between two yew trees. (The Californians, unlike Europeans, do not relegate their yews and cypresses to graveyards.) Jeff made a loud moaning sound. Donahure stopped his pacing, listened, went to the opening between the sliding glass doors and listened again. Jeff repeated the sound. Donahure slipped off his shoes and padded silently across the tiles, a gun in his hand. He had taken only five steps when the butt of the Smith & Wesson caught him behind the right ear.
They used a pair of Donahure’s own handcuffs to secure him to the standpipe of a radiator, Scotch Tape from his desk to gag him and a table runner to blindfold him.
Ryder said: ‘The main entrance will be at the back. Go down to the bungalow and check that the houseboy and his wife are still there. When you return lock it, and if anyone rings don’t answer. Lock every door and window in the house. Pull the curtains here then start on that desk. I’ll be in his bedroom. If there’s anything to be found it will be in one of those two rooms.’
‘Still don’t know what we’re looking for?’
‘No. Something that would make you lift an eyebrow if you saw it in your house or mine.’ He looked around the room. ‘No sign of a safe — and you can’t have secret wall-safes in a wooden house.’
‘If I had as much on my conscience as you say he has I wouldn’t have anything in the house. I’d have it in a bank safe-deposit. Well, at least you’ve got the satisfaction of knowing that he’ll have a headache when he wakes.’ Jeff thought. ‘He could have a study or office or den — lots of these houses do.’
Ryder nodded and left. There was no such study. The first bedroom he came to was plainly unoccupied. The second bedroom was Donahure’s. Ryder used a pencil flash, established that the curtains of both windows were open, closed them and switched on overhead and bedside lights.
The immaculate room clearly reflected the efficient tidiness of the houseboy’s wife, a tidiness that made Ryder’s task that much easier. Ryder was painstaking, methodical, took all of fifteen minutes for his search and found nothing, for there was nothing to find. For all that, he made an interesting discovery. One wall cupboard was given over to a positive armoury of weapons — revolvers, automatics, shotguns and rifles with a copious supply of ammunition to match. There was nothing sinister in this: many American gun buffs had their own private armouries, frequently setting aside an entire gun-room to display them. But two particular weapons caught his attention — peculiarly-shaped light-weight rifles of a type not to be found in any gun store in America. Ryder took them both and a box of matching ammunition then, for good measure, pocketed three of the splendid collection of handcuffs that Donahure had hanging from hooks on the side. All those items he laid on the bed while he went to examine the bathroom. There was nothing there that there shouldn’t have been. He picked up his newly acquired possessions from the bed and rejoined Jeff.
Donahure, chin slumped on his chest, appeared to be asleep. With the rifle barrel Ryder prodded him far from gently in the region of his expansive solar plexus. He was asleep. Jeff was sitting by the desk looking down into an opened drawer. Ryder said: ‘Anything?’
‘Yes.’ Jeff looked pleased with himself. ‘I’m a slow starter but when I get going —’
‘What do you mean, a slow starter?’
‘Desk was locked. Took me some time to find the key — it was at the bottom of Fatso’s holster.’ Jeff deposited a bundle of currency notes on the table. They were in eight separate lots, each secured with an elastic band.
‘Hundreds of bills, all small denominations, looks like. What’s Donahure doing with hundreds of bills?’
‘What indeed? Got any gloves?’
‘Now he asks me. Do I have any gloves? Masks — hoods, rather — because you told me. Now that I — and I suppose you — have smeared fingerprints all over the shop you ask for gloves.’
‘Our fingerprints don’t matter. You think Donahure is going to report this matter and complain about the disappearance of all this money which we are about to take with us? I just want you to count the stuff and not smear up fingerprints. Old notes are no good, they could carry a hundred smears. Maybe some new notes. Count from the bottom left — most people and most tellers count from the top right.’
