Fear is the Key. Alistair MacLean
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we saw, and that was the sheriff’s right arm and whole right side jerking convulsively and the gun spinning backwards to land on a table inches from the note-book of the startled reporter.
Already my Colt was lined up on the man at the door.
‘Come and join us, friend,’ I invited. ‘You look as if you might be having ideas about fetching help.’ I waited till he was halfway down the aisle then whirled round quickly as I heard a scuffling noise behind me.
There had been no need for haste. The policeman was on his feet, but that was all that could be said for him. He was bent almost double, one hand clutching his midriff, the knuckles of the other all but brushing the floor: he was whooping violently, gasping for the breath to ease the pain in his body. Then he slowly straightened to a crouched stooping position, and there was no fear in his face, only hurt and anger and shame and a do-or-die determination.
‘Call off your watchdog, Sheriff,’ I said curtly. ‘He’s liable to get hurt real bad next time.’
The sheriff glared at me venomously and spat out one single unprintable word. He was hunched in his chair, left hand tightly gripping his right wrist: he gave every impression of a man too preoccupied with his own hurt to worry about any damage to others.
‘Give me that gun!’ the policeman demanded hoarsely. His throat seemed to be constricted, he had difficulty in forcing out even those few words. He had taken one lurching step forward and was no more than six feet away. He was only a kid, hardly a day over twenty-one.
‘Judge!’ I said urgently.
‘Don’t do it, Donnelly!’ Judge Mollison had shaken off the first numbing shock. ‘Don’t do it! That man’s a killer. He’s got nothing to lose by killing again. Stay where you are.’
‘Give me that gun.’ Judge Mollison might have been talking to himself for all the effect his words had had. Donnelly’s voice was wooden, unemotional, the voice of a man whose decision lies so far behind that it is no longer a decision but the sole obsessive reason for his existence.
‘Stay where you are, sonny,’ I said quietly. ‘Like the judge said, I have nothing to lose. Take another step forward and I’m going to shoot you in the thigh. Have you any idea what a soft-nosed low-velocity lead bullet does, Donnelly? If it gets your thigh-bone it’ll smash it so badly that you’ll be like me and walk with a limp for the rest of your life: if it gets the femoral artery you’ll like as not bleed to death before – you fool!’
For the second time the court-room shook to the sharp crack and the hollow reverberations of the Colt. Donnelly was on the floor, both hands gripped round his lower thigh, staring up at me with an expression compounded of incomprehension and dazed disbelief.
‘We’ve all got to learn some time,’ I said flatly. I glanced at the doorway, the shots were bound to have attracted attention, but there was no one there. Not that I was anxious on this point: apart from the two constables – both of them temporarily unfit for duty – who had jumped me at the La Contessa, the sheriff and Donnelly constituted the entire police force of Marble Springs. But even so, delay was as foolish as it was dangerous.
‘You won’t get far, Talbot!’ The sheriff’s thin-lipped mouth twisted itself into exaggerated movements as he spoke through tightly clenched teeth. ‘Within five minutes of you leaving, every law officer in the county will be looking for you: within fifteen minutes the call will be state-wide.’ He broke off, wincing, as a spasm of pain twisted his face, and when he looked at me again his expression wasn’t pretty. ‘The call’s going out for a murderer, Talbot, an armed murderer: they’ll have orders to shoot on sight and shoot to kill.’
‘Look, now, Sheriff––’ the judge began, but got no further.
‘Sorry, Judge. He’s mine.’ The sheriff looked down at the policeman lying groaning on the floor. ‘The moment he took that gun he stopped being your business … You better get going, Talbot: you won’t have far to run.’
‘Shoot to kill, eh?’ I said thoughtfully. I looked round the court. ‘No, no, not the gentlemen – they might start getting death or glory ideas about having medals pinned on them …’
‘What the hell you talking about?’ the sheriff demanded.
‘Nor the young ladies of the high school. Hysteria …’ I murmured. I shook my head then looked at the girl with the dark-blonde hair. ‘Sorry, miss, it’ll have to be you.’
‘What – what do you mean?’ Maybe she was scared, maybe she was just acting scared. ‘What do you want?’
‘You. You heard what the Lone Ranger said – as soon as the cops see me they’re going to start shooting at everything in sight. But they wouldn’t shoot at a girl, especially not at one as good looking as you. I’m in a jam, miss, and I need an insurance policy. You’re it. Come on.’
‘Damn it, Talbot, you can’t do that!’ Judge Mollison sounded hoarse, frightened. ‘An innocent girl. You’d put her life in danger –’
‘Not me,’ I pointed out. ‘If anybody’s going to put her life in danger it’ll be the friends of the sheriff here.’
‘But – but Miss Ruthven is my guest. I – I invited her here this afternoon to –’
‘Contravention of the rules of the old southern hospitality. I know. Emily Post would have something to say about this.’ I caught her by the arm, pulled her none too gently to her feet and outside into the aisle. ‘Hurry up, miss, we haven’t –’
I dropped her arm and took one long step up the aisle, clubbed pistol already reversed and swinging. For some time now I’d had my eye on the broken-nosed character three seats behind the girl and the play and shift of expression across the broken landscape of his Neanderthalic features as he struggled to arrive at and finally make a decision couldn’t have been more clearly indicated by ringing bells and coloured lights.
He was almost vertical and halfway out into the aisle, with his right hand reaching deep under the lapel of his coat when the butt end of my Colt caught his right elbow. The impact jarred even my arm so I could only guess what it did to his: quite a lot, if his anguished howl and sudden collapse back into the bench were any criterion. Maybe I’d misjudged the man, maybe he’d only been reaching for another cigar; that would teach him not to carry a cigar-case under his left armpit.
He was still making a great deal of noise when I hobbled my way swiftly up the aisle, pulled the girl out into the porch, slammed the door and locked it. That would only give me ten seconds, fifteen at the most, but it was all I needed. I grabbed the girl’s hand and ran down the path to the street.
There were two cars parked by the kerb. One, an open Chevrolet without any official markings, was the police car in which the sheriff, Donnelly and I had arrived at the court, the other, presumably Judge Mollison’s, a low-built Studebaker Hawk. The judge’s looked to be the faster car of the two, but most of these American cars had automatic drive controls with which I was quite unfamiliar: I didn’t know how to drive a Studebaker and the time it would take me to find out could be fatal. On the other hand, I did know how to operate the automatic drive on a Chevrolet. On the way up to the court-house I’d sat up front beside the sheriff, who drove, and I hadn’t missed a move he made.
‘Get in!’ I nodded my head in the direction of the police car. ‘Fast!’
I saw her open the door out of a corner of an eye while I spared a few moments for the Studebaker. The quickest and most effective way of immobilizing any car is by smashing its distributor. I spent three or four seconds hunting for the bonnet catch before I gave it up and turned my attention to the front tyre nearest me. Had it been a tubeless tyre and had I been carrying my usual automatic, the small calibre steel-jacketed bullet might have failed to make more than a tiny hole, no sooner made than sealed: as it was, the mushrooming Colt bullet split the sidewall wide open and the Studebaker settled with a heavy bump.
The girl was already seated in the Chevrolet. Without bothering to open the door I vaulted