I reached for a cigarette.
“I thought we had agreed we didn’t believe all we heard,” I said, leaning forward to offer the cigarette. She took it, so I had to reach for another. Lighting hers caused me another stab of pain in the head and didn’t improve my temper.
“It could be a proposition,” she said, leaning back and blowing smoke at the ceiling. “How much?”
“What are you trying to buy?”
She studied the cigarette as if she hadn’t seen one before, said, without looking at me, “I don’t want trouble. You’re making trouble. I might pay you to stop.”
“What’s it worth?”
She looked at me then.
“You know you’re a big disappointment to me. You’re just like any of the other slimy little blackmailers.”
“You’d know about them, of course.”
“Yes; I know all about them. And when I tell you what I think it’s worth I suppose you will laugh the way they always laugh and raise the ante. So you will tell me what it’s worth to you and give me the chance to laugh.”
I suddenly didn’t want to go on with this. Maybe my head was aching too badly; maybe, even, I found her so attractive I didn’t want her to think me a heel.
“All right, let’s skip it,” I said. “I was kidding. I can’t be bought. Maybe I could be persuaded. What makes you think I’m stirring up trouble? State your case. If it’s any good I might take my spade and go dig elsewhere.”
She regarded me for perhaps ten seconds, thoughtfully, silently and a little doubtfully.
“You shouldn’t kid about those things,” she said seriously. “You might get yourself disliked. I wouldn’t like to dislike you unless I had a reason.”
I leaned back in the chair and closed my eyes.
“That’s fine. Are you just talking to gain time or do you mean that?”
“I was told you had the manners of a hog and a way with women. The hog part is right.”
I opened my eyes to leer at her.
“The woman part is on the level, too, but don’t rush me.”
Then the telephone rang, startling us both. It was right by me, and as I reached for it she dipped swiftly into her handbag and brought out a .25 automatic. She pushed the gun against the side of my head, the little barrel rested on my skin.
“Sit where you are,” she said, and there was a look in her eyes that froze me. “Leave the telephone alone!”
We sat like that while the bell rang and rang. The shrill sound gnawed at my nerves, bounced on the silent walls of the room, crept through the closed french windows and lost itself in the sea.
“What’s the idea?” I asked, drawing back slowly. I didn’t like the feel of the gun against my face.
“Shut up!” There was a rasp in her voice. “Sit still!”
Finally the bell got tired of ringing and stopped. She stood up.
“Come on, we’re getting out of here,” and again the automatic threatened me.
“Where are we going?” I asked, not moving.
“Away from telephones. Come on if you don’t want to get shot in the leg.”
But it wasn’t the thought of being shot in the leg that made me go with her; it was my curiosity. I was very, very curious because all of a sudden she was frightened. I could see the fear in her eyes as plainly as I could see the little hollow between her breasts.
As we walked down the steps to a car parked just outside my front gate, the telephone began to ring again.
V
The car was a stream-lined, black Rolls, and its power and pace was tremendous. There was nothing about the car to convey a feeling of speed : no sway, no roll, no sound from the engine. Only the thunder of the wind ripping along the stream-lined roof and the black, blurred smudge of a madly-rushing night told me the needle of the speedometer, flickering on ninety, wasn’t fooling.
I sat beside Maureen Crosby in what felt like a low slung armchair and stared at the dazzling pool of light that lay on the road ahead of us and that fled before us like a scared ghost.
She had whipped the car along Orchid Boulevard, blasting a Path for herself through the theatre traffic by the strident, arrogant use of the horn. She overtook cars in the teeth of oncoming traffic, slipping between diminishing gaps and a certain head-on crash by the thickness of her fender paintwork. She stormed up the broad, dark Monte Verde Avenue and on to San Diego Highway. It was when she got on to the six-traffic-lane highway she really began to drive, overtaking everything that moved on the road with a silent rush that must have made the drivers start right out of their skins.
I had no idea where we were going, and when I began to say something, she cut me off with a curt, “Don’t talk! I want to think.” So I gave myself up to the mad rush into the darkness, admiring the way she handled the car, sinking back into the luxury of the seat, and hoping we wouldn’t hit anything.
San Diego Highway makes its way through a flat desert of sand dunes and scrub and comes out suddenly right by the ocean, and then cuts in again to the desert. Instead of keeping to the highway when we reached the sea, she slowed down to a loitering sixty, and swung off the road on to a narrow track that kept us by the sea. The track began to climb steeply, and the sea dropped below us until we breasted the hill and came out on to a cliff head. We were slowing down all the time, and were now crawling along at a bare thirty. After the speed we had been travelling at, we scarcely seemed to be moving. The glaring headlights picked out a notice: Private. Positively No Admittance, at the head of another narrow track lined on either side by tall scrub bushes. She swung the car into it, and the car fitted the track like a hand fits in a glove. We drove around bends and hairpin corners, as far as I could see, getting nowhere.
After some minutes she slowed down and stopped before a twelve-foot gate smothered in barbed wire. She tapped her horn button three times: short, sharp blasts that echoed in the still air and was still coming back at us when the gate swung open apparently of its own accord.
“Very, very tricky,” I said.
She didn’t say anything nor look at me, but drove on, and, looking back, I saw the gate swing to. I wondered suddenly if I was being kidnapped the way Nurse Gurney had been kidnapped. Maybe the whisky I had swallowed was taking a hold, for I really didn’t care. I felt it would be nice to have a little sleep. The clock on the dashboard showed two minutes to midnight: my bed-time.
Then suddenly the track began to broaden out into a carriage way, and we slip through another twelve-foot gate, standing open, and again looking back, I saw it swing to behind us as if closed by an invisible hand.
Into the glare of the headlights appeared a chalet-styled wooden house, screened by flowering shrubs and Tung blossom trees. Lights showed through the windows of the ground floor. An electric lantern shed a bright light on the steps leading to the front door. She pulled up, opened the car door and slid out. I got out more slowly. A terraced garden built into the cliff spread out before me in the moonlight. At the bottom, and it looked a long way down, I could see a big swimming-pool. The sea provided a soft background of sound and glittered in the far distance. The scent of flowers hung in the hot night air in overpowering profusion.
“Is all this yours?” I asked.
She was standing by my side. The top of her sleek dark hair was in line with my shoulder.
“Yes.” After a pause, she said, “I’m sorry about the gun, but I had to get you here quickly.”
“I would have come without the gun.”
“But not before you had answered the telephone. It was very important for you not to answer it.”
“Look, I have a headache and I’m tired. I’ve been kicked in the throat, and although I’m tough, I have still been kicked in the throat. All I ask is for you not to be mysterious. Will you tell me why you have brought me here.
