“Tomorrow,” Curtis told him. “Saturday isn’t a problem, with news. I’ll get it on CNN International by tomorrow night.” Pointing generally away at the interior of the house, he said, “We’ve got dish reception here, you’ll see it for yourself.”
“It would be good. If you did that,” Manville agreed.
Curtis said, “George, you see now how easy I can knock you down, and how easy I can pick you up again.”
“Yes.”
“So I’m just asking you to help me, in a small way. And otherwise I’m only asking you to keep out of the way. Because believe me, I don’t need Pallifer and his friends—”
“Who?”
Curtis laughed, surprised. “No formal introductions, eh? The people who brought you here.”
“Pallifer. He’d be the one I met on the ship. Morgan?”
“The same. And you don’t ever have to meet him again, George. And you don’t have to read about yourself in the newspaper, either. Just take a little vacation, right here at Kennison. Do you ride?”
“Horses? No, I never have.”
“We have horses here, you could learn,” Curtis offered. “Albert taught me to ride, and if he could teach somebody like me, he can teach anybody. It’s a relaxing place, George, a beautiful time out from the cares of the world. I envy you, I honestly do, ten days or two weeks in this place, no worries, no problems.”
Manville said, “And Kim?”
Curtis looked blank. “What about her?” Then he suddenly seemed to understand. “Oh, what am I going to do about her!”
“Yes.”
“Nothing, George, why should I? If she was dead on the ship, then she’s a club I can beat Jerry Diedrich with. Now she doesn’t mean a thing, and I’ll get at Diedrich some other way.”
“But what if she went to the police?”
“And said what, George? That I did something to her? I saved her life, that’s all, rescued her from the sea, carried her safe to shore in my own yacht. If somebody tried to harm her in any way, what does that have to do with me?” Curtis leaned closer to say, “George, if I could swat you down without half-trying, what sort of threat is this girl?”
“You’re not afraid she’ll raise questions.”
“About what? No, George, I’m safe from her, and therefore she’s safe from me.”
Was that true? Curtis was so devious, yet so apparently straightforward, that Manville had constant trouble figuring out what the man really wanted, what he really meant, what was lie and what was truth. “Your people were after her today,” he said.
“To find you,” Curtis told him. “That was the only reason. Then they did find you, so they weren’t looking for her anymore.”
Again, what Curtis said was plausible, without being quite persuasive. Manville brooded on it, trying to think his way through Curtis’s words, while the man watched him, half-smiling. He said, “What if I don’t want to stay here? What if I want to leave, tomorrow?”
Curtis sat back, but didn’t lose the half smile. “I hope you won’t feel that way, George. I hope we don’t have to deal with it. I tell you what.” He sat up again. “Sleep on it. We’ll talk again tomorrow morning, Cindy and I aren’t leaving until after lunch. Think it over, and we’ll talk, and as soon as we’ve reached an agreement you can sit there and watch me get on the phone to get rid of that espionage story. Immediately. All right?”
There was nothing to be gained by arguing. “All right,” Manville said.
“Fine.” Curtis got to his feet, and so did Manville. “We’ve worked well together, George,” Curtis said. “I’m sorry it turned bad for a while.”
“So am I.”
Curtis put his hand out. Hiding his surprise, Manville took it, and Curtis shook his hand with self-conscious pomp, as though some important international treaty had just been signed. “I’m glad we had this talk, George,” he said.
“Yes.”
“Good night.”
“Good night,” Manville said, and turned away.
As he walked back down the long room toward the dining area, its table now cleared, headed back toward his no-longer prison, or possibly prison again, Manville was very aware of Curtis behind him, standing as Manville had left him, unmoving amid the low sofas, the great gray stone wall of fireplace behind him, watching Manville recede. He’s wondering if he’s pulled it off, Manville knew. He’s wondering if he has me fixed in place, or if I’m going to go on being a pest. And I’m wondering the same thing myself.
If I tell him no tomorrow, I’ve thought it over, and I don’t want to stay here, beautiful and restful though Kennison might be, what then? Will he just allow me to leave, like that? Unlikely. If I don’t give him my parole, what else would he do but simply make me a prisoner?
What was it that Curtis was going to attempt, sometime in the next ten days or two weeks? If Manville did nothing about it, would he regret that? Would people be hurt, or even killed? What is Richard Curtis up to?
Should he try to escape tonight? Assuming the door to his room was left unlocked, should he try to get out of here? It was impossible to believe they would have left any of the vehicles where he could get at them, but even if they did, which way would he drive? The road into here was barely a track in the dirt, difficult enough for Curtis’s own chauffeur to find at night, and constantly blocked by stray cattle. Kennison was who knew how many thousands of acres in size. There was no way to get off it tonight.
Tomorrow? Were Pallifer and the other two still around? Manville for a giddy second visualized Albert Farrelly teaching him to ride a horse and then, magically, Manville atop the horse, racing over the downs to freedom.
He left the dining room, and started down the empty hall toward his room. Curtis had been ingratiating tonight, persuasive, reasonable, plausible; but Manville wanted none of it. He wanted nothing but to leave this place. For now, he entered the small neat guestroom and shut the door. Richard Curtis is at his most dangerous, he thought, when he seems the most sane.
14
Jerry was amazed and delighted at how seriously the police were taking their story, which they’d now told three times. The first time was to a detective in the police station where he and Luther and Kim had gone to report the disappearance of George Manville, the second was to his superior at the same station, and now the third time was to an extremely senior inspector in his office here in police headquarters.
The inspector was a very tall, large-framed tweedy man with thick gray brushlike hair and astonishingly dainty granny glasses perched on his hawk nose. His name, he said, was Tony Fairchild, which seemed too diminutive for such a large man, and as he listened he made many notes on a legal pad on his desk in tiny crabbed writing that surely no one else would ever be able to read.
Other plainclothes detectives were in and out of the small but sunny office, going on mysterious errands at nods and hand gestures from Fairchild, returning with equally mysterious nods or headshakes of their own. Sometimes they returned with small slips of paper, which they put on his desk and at which he barely glanced.
Saturday morning. Before breakfast, Kim had come to their room, where she’d phoned the motel in Surfers Paradise, to be told that George Manville had not as yet returned. After breakfast at the hotel, she’d led them to the parking lot where the red car was still where Manville had left it. So then they’d gone to the police.
By now, it was nearly eleven o’clock, and Jerry was beginning to feel talked out. Kim had described the events on the ship at length, Jerry and Luther had described their own activities, Kim’s parents’ whereabouts in Sydney were given, the parents’ unprofitable meeting with Captain Zhang related, Jerry and Luther’s own encounter with Zhang told, and finally the disappearance of George Manville.