Читать книгу Back Room Girl: By the author of Paul Temple - Francis Durbridge, Francis Durbridge - Страница 13

She turned and left him standing there. He had never felt more deflated in his life. The thought uppermost in his baffled mind was that it was as if she had been experimenting with his emotions and her own – if she had any – as coolly and detachedly as if she’d been in her damned laboratory. Was she all scientist, he asked himself, this woman who was unlike anyone he had met before, or was there flesh and blood and a heart in her as well as a brain? He had thought so once or twice in the mine, but to have tried him out like a guinea pig – that was insufferable.

Roy swore, and kicked furiously at a broken branch. Angus, who had stood patiently by during all this, went haring off into the bushes after it. Roy set off towards the chalet. Well, he reflected, he’d take damned good care he didn’t make a fool of himself again, or give her the opportunity of making him one. It was incredible that a woman so physically attractive as she was could be so cold and indifferent. Or perhaps he just wasn’t her type, if she had a type. Maybe she’d thought he’d just been trying to get fresh with her and resented it in the only way she could without making a scene. Somehow he felt she would dread scenes. Oh, hell, Roy my boy, forget it, he told himself.

He tried to do so all the way back to the chalet, but could not forget the feel of her body in his arms and the touch of her lips on his, cool and impersonal though they had been. Jim Tailby would certainly have had a laugh if he’d been there to see what happened and if he knew how he was still thinking about her. He would have twitted him unmercifully. What was it he had said – ‘Mark my words, one of these days you’ll fall good and proper. You’ll pick up some nice girl somewhere and you’ll find you can’t put her down.’

Well, Roy reflected bitterly, it certainly hadn’t been a case of his putting Miss Silvers down. The boot had been on the other foot. She’d done it to him in very decided fashion and he hadn’t liked it one little bit. He had a sneaking feeling, too, that Jim would hardly approve of the way in which he was thinking of Miss Silvers now. He would probably regard it as a danger sign. Perhaps it was. He was surprised to find that, despite the rebuff, he didn’t care. After all, he’d been in some pretty dangerous spots before – but, he had to admit, none quite like this.

Angus broke into his train of thought by yelping excitedly as they neared the chalet.

‘Shut up, you idiot!’ Roy told him angrily as he put the key in the door and turned the lock. Angus took no notice and Roy bent to slap him, pushing the door open as he did so. Then the whole world seemed to explode in his face.

It took Roy a little time afterwards to recall the exact sequence of events, but it worked out something like this – first a flash of orange light with fiery red in its centre, which completely blinded him for a moment or two; then a cracking explosion, a whistle in the air over his bent head, and finally a faint clattering noise.

Instinctively, from his stooping position, he dropped flat on his face on the verandah. He remembered thinking as he fell, and feeling rather pleased about it, that he hadn’t forgotten his Service training. When, in the next few moments, as he lay there nothing else happened, he began slowly to worm his way on his stomach into the chalet, where he could hear Angus scuffling excitedly to and fro.

In the darkness he felt for the table in the middle of the room and cautiously raised himself. He reached up and his groping hand found the matches near the lamp where he always kept them. He waited a few moments, listening, then struck a match. A quick glance told him that the room was empty. He sighed with relief, got to his feet, lit the lamp and quickly closed the door.

Then he looked around, and on the mantelpiece, facing the door, he saw what he had expected to find. Lying on its side was a still-smoking pistol. It had been the central part of a neatly made booby trap, the sort of thing he had often come across during the war, arranged so that the pistol would fire immediately anyone opened the door.

He thought: If I hadn’t stooped to smack Angus I’d be a dead man now. Suddenly he felt clammily cold. He poured himself a stiff whisky and drank it. That made him feel better. You must have gone soft, he told himself. You never felt like this during the war. But that had been different. You expected this sort of thing then. Your life hung by a thread which might snap at any moment. But you didn’t expect to find booby traps in a little chalet tucked away in a quiet spot like No Man’s Cove.

He examined the pistol again. It was a German Luger and the trap had been very neatly arranged. The Germans were experts at booby traps, and Leyland had ‘guessed’ that Delouris and his other escaped friends were within five miles of the old mine. This looked like something more than a guess, but if Delouris and his crowd were responsible for this, how had they got on to him so soon, and why?

Angus was still sniffing all round the chalet, especially near the side window. Roy went over to it. One of the panes of glass near the catch had been neatly removed. So that was how they’d got in, if it was ‘they’. Quite simple, of course.

He stood holding the pistol in his hand, pondering his best line of action. His first impulse was to go back to the mine and tell Leyland what had happened, but, he reflected, he might still be under observation by the person or persons who had set the trap to see if it had claimed its victim. He decided that news of the incident could wait until morning when he went into Torcombe. He could leave a message for Leyland at the police station.

Roy turned down the lamp, walked to the door and looked cautiously out. It was a beautiful night. The air was soft and still warm. He could hear the sea murmuring quietly along the beach. On any other night he would have gone for a bathe before he went to bed, but the idea did not tempt him tonight. Orion was flashing jewelled messages in the sky and the perfume of the night-scented stocks he had planted near the stream was pleasant in his nostrils. This was a night for romance, if ever there was one, not for shootings and what-have-you, but all he’d got was something akin to a slap in the face. He sighed a little, turned and went inside.

He didn’t sleep on the verandah that night. Instead he locked the door of the chalet, saw that all the windows were securely fastened, took out his old Service revolver from his pack and saw that it was loaded. Then he lay down, but without taking off his clothes.

It was a long time before he got to sleep, though the night was calm and peaceful, except for Angus’s sighings and snorings. When he did get off, he dreamed an absurd boy’s adventure sort of dream in which he chased film gangsters all over England, and rescued Miss Silvers from their clutches in all kinds of extraordinary situations. But every time he tried to claim his due reward, she held him off with a pistol – a Luger pistol.