They are all bottles, aren’t they?’
‘You are angry because you are losing.’
‘I never lose.’
Then Wormold made his careful slip and exposed his king. For a moment he thought that Segura had not noticed and then he thought that deliberately to avoid drinking Segura was going to let his chance go by. But the temptation to take the king was great and what lay beyond the move was a shattering victory. His own piece would be made a king and a massacre would follow. Yet he hesitated. The heat of the whisky and the close night melted his face like a wax doll’s; he had difficulty in focusing. He said, ‘Why did you do that?’ ‘What?’
‘You lose your king and the game.’
‘Damn. I didn’t notice. I must be drunk.’
‘You drunk?’
‘A little.’
‘I’m drunk too. You know I’m drunk. You are trying to make me drunk.
Why?’
‘Don’t be a fool, Segura. Why should I want to make you drunk? Let’s stop the game, call it a draw.’
‘God damn a draw. I know why you want to make me drunk. You want to show me that list I mean you want me to show you.’
‘What list?’
‘I have you all in the net. Where is Milly?’
‘I told you, out.’
‘Tonight I go to the Chief of Police. We draw the net tight.’
‘With Carter in it?’
‘Who is Carter?’ He wagged his finger at Wormold. ‘You are in it -but I know you are no agent. You are a fraud.’
‘Why not sleep a bit, Segura? A drawn game.’
‘No drawn game. Look. I take your king.’ He opened the little bottle of Red Label and drank it down.
‘Two bottles for a king,’ Wormold said and handed him a Dunosdale Cream. Segura sat heavily in his chair, his chin rocking. He said, ‘Admit you are beaten. I do not play for pieces.’
‘I admit nothing. I have the better head and look, I huff you. You could have gone on.’ A Canadian rye had got mixed with the Bourbons, a Lord Calvert, and Wormold drank it down. He thought, it must be the last. If he doesn’t pass out now, I’m finished. I won’t be sober enough to pull a trigger. Did he say it was loaded?
‘Matters nothing,’ Segura said in a whisper. ‘You are finished anyway.’ He moved his hand slowly over the board as though he were carrying an egg in a spoon. ‘See?’ He captured one piece, two pieces, three. ‘Drink this, Segura.’ A George IV, a Queen Anne, the game was ending in a flourish of royalty, a Highland Queen.
‘You can go on, Segura. Or shall I huff you again? Drink down.’ Vat 69.
‘Another. Drink it, Segura.’ Grant’s Standfast. Old Argyll. ‘Drink them, Segura. I surrender now.’ But it was Segura who had surrendered. Wormold undid the captain’s collar to give him air and eased his head on the back of the seat, but his own legs were uncertain as he walked towards the door. He had Segura’s gun in his pocket.
At the Seville-Biltmore he went to the house phone and called up Carter. He had to admit that Carter’s nerves were steady far steadier than his own. Carter’s mission in Cuba had not been properly fulfilled and yet he stayed on, as a marksman or perhaps as a decoy duck. Wormold said, ‘Good evening, Carter.’ ‘Why, good evening, Wormold.’ The voice had just the right chill of injured pride.
‘I want to apologize to you, Carter. That silly business of the whisky.
I was tight I suppose. I’m a bit tight now. Not used to apologizing.’
‘It’s quite all right, Wormold. Go to bed.’
‘Sneered at your stammer. Chap shouldn’t do that.’ He found himself talking like Hawthorne. Falsity was an occupational disease. ‘I didn’t know what the H-hell you meant.’
‘I shoon -soon found out what was wrong. Nothing to do with you. That damned headwaiter poisoned his own dog. It was very old, of course, but to give it poisoned scraps that’s not the way to put a dog to sleep.’ ‘Is that what h-happened? Thank you for letting me know, but it’s late.
I’m just going to bed, Wormold.’
‘Man’s best friend.’
‘What’s that? I can’t h-hear you.’
‘Caesar, the King’s friend, and there was the rough-haired one who went down at Jutland. Last seen on the bridge beside his master.’ ‘You are drunk, Wormold.’ It was so much easier, Wormold found, to imitate drunkenness after -how many Scotch and Bourbon? You can trust a drunk man -in vi no veritas. You can also more easily dispose of a drunk man. Carter would be a fool not to take the chance. Wormold said, ‘I feel in the mood for going round the spots.’
“What spots?’
‘The spots you wanted to see in Havana.’
‘It’s getting late.’
‘It’s the right time.’ Carter’s hesitation came at him down the wire. He said, ‘Bring a gun.’ He felt a strange reluctance to kill an unarmed killer if Carter should ever chance to be unarmed.
‘A gun? Why?’
‘In some of these places they try to roll you.’
‘Can’t you bring one?’
‘I don’t happen to own one.’
‘Nor do I,’ and he believed he caught in the receiver the metallic sound of a chamber being checked. Diamond cut diamond, he thought, and smiled. But a smile is dangerous to the act of hate as much as to the act of love. He had to remind himself of how Hasselbacher had looked, staring up from the floor under the bar. They had not given the old man one chance, and he was giving Carter plenty. He began to regret the drinks he had taken.
‘I’ll meet you in the bar,’ Carter said.
‘Don’t be long.’
‘I have to get dressed.’
Wormold was glad now of the darkness of the bar. Carter, he supposed, was telephoning to his friends and perhaps making a rendezvous, but in the bar at any rate they couldn’t pick him out before he saw them. There was one entrance from the street and one from the hotel, and at the back a kind of balcony which would give support if he needed it to his gun. Anyone who entered was blinded for a while by the darkness, as he himself was. When he entered he couldn’t for a moment see whether the bar held one or two customers, for the pair were tightly locked on a sofa by the street door.
He asked for a Scotch, but he left it untasted, sitting on the balcony, watching both doors. Presently a man entered; he couldn’t see the face; it was the hand patting the pipe-pocket which identified Carter. ‘Carter.’
Carter came to him.
‘Let’s be off,’ Wormold said.
‘Take your drink first and I’ll h-have one to keep you company.’ ‘I’ve had too much, Carter. I need some air. We’ll get a drink in some house.’
Carter sat down. ‘Tell me where you plan to take me.’ ‘Any one of a dozen whore-houses. They are all the same, Carter. About a dozen girls to choose from. They’ll do an exhibition for you. Come on, we’ll go. They get crowded after midnight.’
Carter said anxiously, ‘I’d like a drink first. I can’t go to a show like that stone sober.’
‘You aren’t expecting anyone, are you, Carter?’
‘No, why?’
‘I thought the way you watched the door…’
‘I don’t know a soul in this town. I told you.’
‘Except Dr Braun.’
‘Oh yes, of course, Dr Braun. But he’s not the kind of companion to take to a h-house, is he?’
‘After you, Carter.’
Reluctantly Carter moved. It was obvious that he was searching for an excuse to stay. He said, ‘I just want to leave a message with the porter. I’m expecting a telephone call.’
‘From Dr Braun?’
‘Yes.’ He hesitated. ‘It seems rude going out like this before h-he rings. Can’t you wait five minutes, Wormold?’
‘Say you’ll be back by one unless you decide to make a night of it.’
‘It would be better to wait.’
‘Then I’ll go without you. Damn you, Carter, I thought you wanted to see the town.’ He walked rapidly away. His car was parked across the street. He never looked back, but he heard steps following him. Carter no more wanted to lose him than he wanted to lose Carter.