“Hi,” she said. “Mr West, you’ve got to make David believe you’ll find Ricky.”
“Have I?” Roger said heavily.
“It matters more than almost anything else you can think of. You must make him believe that you will find the boy. Even if it means faked evidence.” Her eyes demanded that of him, and he knew that she felt this need desperately. “Because if you don’t —”
“He will listen to ransom talk,” Roger suggested.
She drew nearer, a hand touched his, the honey-coloured eyes had a faraway look. In a tauter voice, she said: “You’re very hard. I can tell that But you must convince David that he will do harm, not good, by talking terms with anyone. It could be for money. It’s more likely to be someone who wants to high pressure David for his secret knowledge.”
The telephone bell rang.
She turned, swift as light, towards the door, but Roger reached it just behind her and gripped her arm. She didn’t try to pull herself free, just walked along the passage, speaking in a whisper.
“David will answer it upstairs. We can listen-in in the dining-room.”
They were at the dining-room door, and she meant to reach the extension telephone first. Roger slipped past her, actually pushing her to one side as he picked up the receiver. A yard away, she stood defiant and resentful. He couldn’t mistake the curiously gruff quality of Shawn’s voice, although Shawn was only giving the number of the house.
A man said: “That David Shawn?”
“Yes,” said Shawn.
“David Shawn,” repeated the caller, as if he were rolling the words round his tongue. He was English, or his voice was English, and Roger had expected an American. “How long have you been awake?”
Shawn said: “Long enough.”
“So you know.”
“I know,” Shawn said.
He didn’t alter his tone, but Roger could picture his face, the burning eyes, the way his jaw clamped and the way his lips moved as if uttering each word caused pain.
“Don’t do anything,” the caller ordered. “Just wait until you’re told what to do. Just wait.”
He rang off.
Roger held the receiver close to his ear, and could hear Shawn’s heavy breathing. Slowly, that receiver went down. Lissa moved away from Roger, and swift brightness of a smile drove away the frost of her resentment.
“Was the conversation worth hearing?”
“He had orders to wait and do nothing.” Roger replaced his receiver. “And you think he’ll obey.”
“I’m afraid he will obey. I think —” Lissa paused, frowned in concentration, and then went on more rapidly, drawing closer in a conspiratorial way. “I guessed a lot, but David told me the truth just now. He and Belle were in danger of breaking up, and only Ricky kept them together. He agreed to have Ricky here in a desperate effort to stave off the collapse. It would be a disaster to him, or he thinks it would. She will blame him, of course. She will say if he had given up his assignment and gone back home, this would never have happened to their son.”
“Shawn is important, very important, doing work only he can do. This could prey on his mind so much that he would be unable to carry on with it.”
“Sooner or later you’re going to have to talk freely to me or someone at the Yard,” Roger said. “We can’t blunder about in the dark. Go back and tell Marino that, will you? Tell him we can play hush-hush as well as he can, but if he wants results quickly, we’ve got to know everything. And I don’t care a damn what arrangement the Ambassador and the Assistant Commissioner or the Queen’s High Admiral might come to. Use my car. I’ll wait until the doctor arrives.”
“What’s got into you?” she demanded.
“I ought to be on the telephone, ought to have told the Yard everything an hour ago, to warn all ports and airfields, all railway termini, every kicking-off point from England. The police ought to be on the look-out for the boy, have his description in every police station, in every newspaper. Tell Marino that.”
“And leave you alone with Shawn.”
“That’s right,” Roger said.
“That won’t do you any good,” she said. “David Shawn won’t talk to you about his work or anything that will lead up to it. You have a job to do too, Superintendent You have to convince David that you can find the boy — that he doesn’t have to start doing what the others tell him yet Will you do that?”
“I will try,” Roger promised.
Obviously, he had to try.
He went to the front door with her, and she smiled and waved from his car as she settled down at the wheel. He fought the temptation to watch her until she was out of sight, turned, closed the front door with a snap, and hurried up the stairs. He tapped and went into the bedroom, without ceremony.
Belle Shawn lay in bed, the clothes drawn up to her neck, her face pale, her hair very tidy. Shawn was by the dressing-table, fully dressed, except for his coat and shoes, and was combing his thick, dark hair. He used Roger’s
