Wrath of the Lion. Jack Higgins
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Mallory said calmly.
It was some indefinable quality in the voice, a look in the dark eyes, that made the barman swallow his angry retort and force a smile. He filled a fresh glass and pushed it across.
‘We aim to please.’
‘That’s what I thought,’ Mallory said, his eyes following the Irishman and his friend as they went through the door after the woman. He took the whisky down in one easy swallow and went after them.
He stood at the top of the steps listening, but the fog smothered everything, even sound. A ship moved across the water, its fog-horn muted, alien and strange, touching something deep inside him. He shivered involuntarily. It was at that moment that Anne Grant cried out.
He went down the steps and stood listening, head slightly forward. The cry sounded again from the left, curiously flat and muffled by the fog, and he started to run.
He turned the corner on to a wharf at the far end of the street, running silently on rubber-soled feet, and took them by surprise. The two men were holding the struggling woman on the ground in the yellow light of a street-lamp.
As the Irishman turned in alarm, Mallory lifted a foot into his face. The man staggered back with a cry, rolled over the edge of the wharf and fell ten feet into the soft sludge of the mudbank.
The bearded man pulled a knife from his pocket and Mallory backed away. The man grinned and rushed him. As the knife came up, Mallory grabbed for the wrist, twisting the arm up and out to one side, taut as a steel bar. The man screamed like a woman and dropped the knife. Mallory struck him a savage blow across the side of the neck with his forearm and he crumpled to the ground.
Anne Grant leaned against the wall, her face pale in the sickly yellow light, blood streaking one cheek from a deep scratch. She laughed shakily and brushed a tendril of dark hair from her forehead.
‘You don’t do things by halves, do you?’
‘What’s the point?’ he said.
Her Jersey suit was soiled and bedraggled, the blouse ripped to the waist. When she moved forward, she limped heavily on her right foot. She stopped to pick up her handbag and the bearded man groaned and rolled on his back.
She looked down at him for a moment, then turned to Mallory. ‘Are you going to call the police?’
‘Do you want me to?’
‘Not particularly.’ She started to shake slightly. ‘Suddenly it seems colder.’
He slipped off his reefer jacket and hung it around her shoulders. ‘What you need is a drink. We’ll go back to the hotel. You can use my room while I get you a taxi.’
She nodded down at the bearded man. ‘Will he be all right?’
‘His kind always are.’
He took her arm. They walked to the corner and turned into the street. It started to rain, a thin drizzle that beaded the iron railings like silver. There was a dull, aching pain in her ankle and the old houses floated in the fog, unreal and insubstantial, part of the dark dream from which she had yet to awaken, and the pavement seemed to move beneath her feet.
His arm was instantly around her, strong and reassuring, and she turned and smiled into the strange, pale face, the dark eyes. ‘I’ll be all right. A little dizzy, that’s all.’
The hotel sign swam out of the fog to meet them and they went through the entrance and mounted the rickety stairs. His room was at the end of the corridor and he opened the door, switched on the light and motioned her inside.
‘Make yourself at home. I’ll be back in a couple of minutes.’
The room had that strange, rather dead, atmosphere typical of cheap hotels the world over. There was a strip of worn carpet on the floor, an iron bed, a cheap wardrobe and locker. The one touch of luxury was the washbasin in the corner by the window and she hobbled across to it.
Surprisingly, there was plenty of hot water and she washed her face and hands, then examined herself in the mirror that was screwed to the wall above the basin. The scratch on her cheek was only superficial, but her suit was ruined. Otherwise she seemed to have sustained no real damage. She was sitting on the edge of the bed examining her ankle when he returned.
He placed a half-bottle of brandy and two glasses on top of the bedside locker and dropped to one knee beside her. ‘Any damage?’
She shook her head. ‘A nasty graze, that’s all.’
He pulled a battered fibre suitcase from under the bed and took out a heavy fisherman’s sweater which he dropped into her lap. ‘You’d better put that on. You’re wet through.’
When she had pulled it over her head and rolled up the long sleeves, he rested her right foot on his knee and bandaged the damaged ankle expertly with a folded handkerchief. She watched quietly.
He was of medium height, with broad shoulders, and wore the sort of clothes common to sailors. A cheap blue-flannel shirt and heavy working trousers in some dark material, held up by a broad leather belt with a brass buckle. But this was no ordinary man. He had a strange, hard enigmatic face, the face of a man few would care to trifle with. The skin was clear and bloodless; black, crisp hair in a point to the forehead. The eyes were the strangest feature, so dark that all light died in them.
On the wharf he had been terrible in his anger, competent and deadly, and when he looked up suddenly his dark eyes stared through her like glass. For the first time that night genuine fear moved inside her and then his whole face creased into a smile of quite devastating charm, so great, that he seemed to undergo a complete personality change.
‘You look about ten years old in that sweater.’
She smiled warmly and held out her hand. ‘My name is Anne Grant and I’m very grateful to you.’
‘Mallory,’ he said. ‘Neil Mallory.’
He touched her hand briefly, opened the brandy, poured a generous measure into one of the glasses and passed it to her. ‘I got the barman to phone for a taxi. It might be some time before it gets here.’
‘I’d like to know why the driver who brought me didn’t wait,’ she said. ‘I asked him to.’
‘They’re not too keen on hanging around the dock area at night. It’s a rough place and taxi-drivers are obvious targets.’ He grinned. ‘That goes double for good-looking young women, by the way.’
She smiled ruefully. ‘Don’t rub it in. I’d no idea what I was letting myself in for, but I was getting desperate. I’d been waiting in Lulworth for someone for most of the day. When it became obvious that he wasn’t going to show up I decided to come looking for him.’
‘Van Sondergard?’ Mallory said. ‘I heard you ask the barman about him.’
‘Did you know him?’
‘He had a room along the corridor from here. I had a drink with him once when he came in the bar. Nothing more than that. Where did you meet him?’
‘I didn’t,’ she said. ‘The whole thing was arranged through the seamen’s pool. I told them I need someone to take a motor-cruiser across to the Channel Islands for me and captain her for a month or so until my sister-in-law and I were capable of looking after her ourselves. I also told them we’d prefer someone who’d done a little skin-diving. They put me in touch with Sondergard.’ She sighed. ‘He seemed rather keen on the idea. I’d love to know what changed his mind.’
‘It was very simple really. He was sitting in the bar half drunk, feeling rather sorry for himself, when one of his old captains walked in, due out on the morning tide for Suez and short of a quartermaster. Three drinks was all it took for Sondergard to pack his duffel and go off with him. Sailors have a habit of doing things like that.’
He swallowed his brandy, took out an old leather cigarette