So Curtis didn’t want him making contact with the outside world, which wasn’t a surprise. But he needed to. He needed to know when the time was right to get out of here, and more than that, he needed to try to reach Kim.
He’d had no contact with Kim since he’d gone to see the lawyer, Brevizin. She’d escaped from Curtis’s men then, but was she safe now? Had she managed to contact her friends at Planetwatch?
Also, she probably knew by now that Curtis had taken back his charges against Manville, which would have to look as though Manville had despite everything gone back to work for Curtis, had become her enemy again. He wanted her to know that wasn’t true.
But how could he reach her, how could he reach anybody in the outer world, without a telephone? Kennison was a huge sprawling estate in the middle of nowhere. The nearest neighbor, supposedly, was more than fifty miles away.
The frustration was grinding him down. What if he just gave up this whole plan? He was faking agreement with Curtis, going along with him as though their differences were settled, only to find out what the man was up to; but what if he stopped? What if he managed to escape, though he didn’t yet see how he could do that, and made his way back to Brisbane? Found Kim, went with her to the lawyer, then went to the police? What would Curtis do then?
Three things, that Manville could think of. He would bury Manville and Kim under a horde of lawyers. He would turn Pallifer and the others loose again, to hunt Manville and Kim down and rid himself of them forever. And he would go on with his plan, whatever it was, with no one left to stop him.
Sunday afternoon. Manville roamed the house. In the game room, trying to distract himself, he shot a little pool, and found he had to resist the urge to smash something with the cuestick. On a side wall in here stood a glass-doored gun rack; it was unlocked, and it was empty.
No more pool. He roamed again, and came to the door of the office, which was shut and locked, the Farrellys being away in their own quarters or somewhere else on the grounds. Beyond this door would be telephones, and guns, and keys to the various cars. He touched the knob, waggled it. Tonight, could he manage to break in here?
“Oh, sir, please be careful.”
He turned, and it was the woman who’d brought him the change of clothes his first night. He said, “Yes?”
She came toward him down the hall, smiling in a friendly way, but looking concerned. “You must be careful with that door,” she said. “There’s a very loud alarm, when it’s locked. If you break the circuit, it would be terribly embarrassing.”
Manville took his hand away from the knob. “Embarrassing,” he said. “Yes, I suppose it would.”
18
It was becoming a joke, but not one Curtis appreciated. Every time he tried to get to Singapore, it seemed, he wound up back in this same penthouse suite in the Heritage in Brisbane. This time, he was waiting to be interviewed by some local policeman named Fairchild, and the subject, stupidly enough, was Captain Zhang.
Killed himself. The man killed himself. Why in God’s name did he have to go and do that? And at this time of all times, when the last thing Richard Curtis wanted was official attention. What he planned to do was going to be very loud and very obvious and very destructive, and half the police officers in the world would be looking for the person who’d put it together. Curtis intended to keep himself well in the clear, before, during and after. He wanted not the slightest suspicion pointed in his direction. He was a businessman, he had a solid reputation, he was already rich; who would look at Richard Curtis?
Unfortunately, there were now two people who could cause the police to at least glance in the direction of Richard Curtis. They didn’t know enough to stop him ahead of time, but they could certainly finger him afterward, and Curtis had no desire to be a man in hiding the rest of his life. So those two people had to be dealt with, and then no one else could be permitted to learn anything at all about what was to come.
But at least he had a plan. Pallifer would get rid of the girl in the next couple of days, and Manville would remain on ice at Kennison, to be useful if necessary during the operation, and to be dispatched immediately after. So the situation was tricky, but it could be handled. It would be handled.
And now, in the middle of it, damn Zhang has to kill himself! The police would want to know why, of course, and Curtis would have no explanation, nothing but baffled sorrow and sympathy. Zhang had been a good employee, Curtis had had no idea anything was wrong; maybe at home? Without answers, the police would keep asking questions, but Curtis knew better than to make something up. Remain baffled, and wait for it to blow over.
Would Zhang have confided in anybody else on the crew?
It seemed unlikely, but just to be on the safe side, tomorrow morning every man of them would leave Australia. Curtis would lease another ship, hire a captain, man the new ship with the old crew, and send it any damn place; Singapore, why not?
“Probably get there before I do,” he muttered, glowering at the Botanical Gardens down below, and the doorbell softly ding-donged.
Three o’clock exactly. Police Inspector Fairchild was a prompt man, apparently. Let him be impatient, too, Curtis thought, as he crossed to the door, let him not give a single shit about some dead Chinaman.
On the phone, Inspector Tony Fairchild had sounded like an older man, gruff-voiced, perhaps pedantic. In person, though, he was something else, more impressive and, if you were the kind to be intimidated, intimidating. He was considerably taller than Curtis, big-boned with very little body fat, and with large big-knuckled hands. He had a hawk head, topped by a stiff brush of gray hair, and he had turned what must be a habitual squint into something that looked more like a disapproving frown. “Mr. Curtis,” he said.
“Come in, Inspector. You’re prompt.”
“I thought you’d appreciate that, being a businessman,” Fairchild said, as they shook hands. “Time is money, isn’t that it?”
“That is certainly it,” Curtis agreed. “Come sit over here.”
As they crossed to the sofas, Fairchild looked around in approval, saying, “The last time I was in here, it was to pick up a pair of stock swindlers. Lived high, they did, for a while. These days, to them, I’m afraid, time is only a sentence.”
They sat, and from his various pockets Fairchild took a notebook, a pen, and a pair of tiny granny glasses. “Captain Zhang Yung-tsien,” he said.
Curtis sighed, and shook his head. “Poor Captain Zhang. I am absolutely astounded.”
“No hint this was coming?”
“None. Well, in truth, I don’t know the man — I mean, I didn’t know the man that well.”
“Only as an employee.”
“Yes.”
“For how long?”
“Three years.”
“You get to know a man in three years, don’t you, Mr. Curtis?”
“If you’re around him all the time,” Curtis said. “The Mallory is a luxury, Inspector, that I justify by having business meetings on it. I had one last week. Before that, it was probably four months since I’d been on the ship. In three years, I suppose I’ve been around Captain Zhang for a total of less than two months.”
“What does he do— There you are, I’m doing it, too. What did he do with himself the rest of the time?”
“Yachts are not fast,” Curtis said. “If I want him in San Francisco, let us say, two weeks from today, he should leave Brisbane by Wednesday at the latest. Most of the time, Captain Zhang was moving the Mallory toward where I wanted it next, without me being aboard.”