Читать книгу The Stars are Dark - Peter Cheyney - Страница 4

Table of Contents

A film director, seeking a ghostly scene for some macabre film, would have acclaimed the location of the Box of Compasses.

It stood, set back fifty yards from the deserted cross-roads, one arm of which dwindled away past the wooded crest of the hill; turned itself into a footpath and disappeared amongst the scrub on the cliff top. One arm ran into the moorland; the other wound past the inn and broadened on its way to the town. There was no shelter from the wind. The ramshackle building stood on a bare plateau surrounded by scrubland. On the other side of the woods the cliffs descended steeply, disappearing into sand-dunes running down to the long shelving beach of the bay.

Either there was fog or rain or wind—sometimes all of them. This night was stormy. The wind howled in from the sea, through the woodland, swept down to the cross-roads to vent its fury on the Box of Compasses. It rattled the old-time shutters, banged unsecured doors, set window frames and hinges creaking, and swung the inn sign backwards and forwards, creating in the process a rusty dirge as a set-off to its own shrill voice.

The lorry came from the direction of the town at a good thirty miles an hour. The canvas flap at the back was open, whipped against the side, making a noise like a cracking whip.

When the inn came in sight, Greeley, who was sitting in the cab beside the driver, said: “Look, run up the road till you come to the side of the wood. There’s an open space there you can turn in and park.”

The driver said: “All right.” He spoke in a cultured voice and the hands that gripped the steering-wheel were white—unused to manual work.

Greeley looked at them. He thought: “Jesus, they’re givin’ us some fine proper boys these days. I wonder where this one came from.” He put his hand into the side pocket of his leathern wind-jammer; brought out a crumpled cigarette. He lit it; drew the smoke down into his lungs, opened his mouth and let it come out again. The cigarette was stuck artistically to his lower lip. Greeley was one of those men to whose lower lips cigarettes always stuck. He undid two of the buttons of his leathern jacket; put his hand inside. Under his left arm, in a soft holster, was a .45 Webley Scott automatic. He pulled the holster a little forward, so that his right hand could close easily on the butt. He buttoned up his jacket, put his hands on his knees, sat looking through the windshield.

He began to think about the girl at Kingstown. Jesus ... there was a girl. When they were serving out nerve—and when he said nerve he meant nerve—she’d got herself a basinful. And she had one of those pale, wistful sort of faces and fine blonde hair, and a figure that made your fingers tingle....

She looked sort of weak and helpless, and she would look at you with big blue eyes, and you would think that somebody had taken her for a very rough ride and you would feel sorry for her.

Weak and helpless.... Greeley, his sharp eyes looking at the windshield in front of him and not seeing anything except that wistful face, began to grin. Weak and helpless. ... Like hell she was! He remembered the do in the cellar of the Six Sisters on the Meath Road when she’d shot Vietzlin when he was nearly through the window ... a lovely drop shot ... with a forty-five that she’d grabbed out of Villier’s coat pocket and a pull on it that weighed all of two pounds.

Greeley wondered who she was; if he would ever see her again. He wondered where the devil Quayle had found that one. Quayle certainly knew how to pick them. He certainly had some method. He never made a nonsense of picking people....

Greeley conceded that Quayle knew what he was doing. Nearly all the time he knew what he was doing. A cool, hard-headed one, Quayle ... one who knew when to be tough and when to play it nice and soft and easy; who knew how to look like a big kind-hearted one and who could talk you into or out of anything, but who could do other things beside talk.

Greeley wondered what Quayle was getting out of it. Pretty much the same as the rest of them, he thought. Sweet nothing ... sweet Fanny Adams ... sweet goddam all ... except maybe the kick. Perhaps Quayle was getting a kick out of it.

Massanay, who was driving, said: “I feel damn’ funny. I feel as if my stomach’s cold inside. I wonder what’s going to happen?”

Greeley grinned. He said: “You should bleedin’ worry! You take a tip from me—don’t you ever think of what’s goin’ to happen before it happens in this game, see? It don’t do, you know, and it don’t get you any place. Just take things as they come. The other thing you can remember is that nothing is ever as bad as you think it’s going to be.”

Massanay said: “You ought to know.”

“You bet your life I ought to know,” said Greeley. “When you’ve been kickin’ around in this racket as long as I have nothing’s going to make you feel funny; nothing’s going to surprise you. If a couple of burnin’ fiends dropped out of hell in a flash of blue flame, you wouldn’t even blink.”

There was a pause. Then Greeley asked: “You know what you’ve got to do?”

Massanay said: “Yes.” He went on, talking like a child who’s learned a lesson: “I’m going to park the lorry round in the clearing of the woods. I’m going to wait ten minutes; then I’m going down to the saloon bar of the Box of Compasses. I’ll have a drink. There are going to be three other men there—yourself and two more. I know what the other two will look like. All right. By the time I’ve had my drink it ought to be time for people to start moving. First the tall man will go; then the man of medium height with very wide shoulders. About two minutes after he’s gone I shall leave.”

Greeley said: “That’s all right. Where do you go to?”

“I follow the path along the top of the cliff,” said Massanay. “Down the other side, about a hundred yards down, there’s a cut in the cliff. The cleft runs down to the beach. I’m to turn down into that cleft. Somewhere there I’ll find you three.”

“That’s all right,” said Greeley. “All right. Well, you do it.” He grinned. “All you got to do is to pull your belt in one hole, if you’ve got a belt on. That’ll stop your guts from turnin’ over. And the second thing is try and keep your teeth from chatterin’. Every time there’s a lull in the wind you sound like a bleedin’ typewriter workin’.”

He grinned suddenly in a friendly manner. He dug Massanay in the ribs. He said:

“Don’t worry, kid. You’ll be all right. I was like you the first time. You can drop me off here.”

Massanay slowed down. Greeley opened the door and stood on the step of the slow-moving lorry. He said:

“When you park this lorry, tie up that flap at the back. There might be some nosy fellow hangin’ around—a cyclist policeman or a Home Guard. Maybe they’d want to know what you’re doin’ with four six-foot boxes in this outfit.”

Massanay said: “Why should they worry?”

Greeley said: “Why? Because they look like coffins, don’t they?” He grinned again. “Because they look like coffins nobody would believe they were fruit boxes. And the joke is they are fruit boxes but they ought to be coffins. So long, chum.”

He dropped off into the road. He stood watching the lorry as it went up the hill towards the wood.