“I assumed that. If he hadn’t, he would hardly have come to England to talk, would he?”
“I imagine not, indeed.” Thixey blew smoke. “I’m afraid we can’t possibly take your unadorned word, old man. You’ll have to have a little prompting… you agree, of course, Rencke?”
“I agree very much indeed,” Rencke said softly. “I think it is of little use to keep the velvet glove too long, my friend.” His moist red lips, sensual lips, hung open a little as his glance strayed towards the Australian girl, Beatty. “Yes, it is time we allowed the young lady to see what she can do.”
“Very well,” Thixey said in an equable tone. “Hands, please, gentiemen.”
Moss moved and the American moved and a Luger automatic appeared in Thixey’s hand. Suddenly Shaw felt his arms taken in a powerful grip and his hands were forced down on to the table. Thixey reached out to the girl with his left hand and passed her his cigarette. “All yours. Beatty,” he said.
Beatty took a pull at the cigarette and when the end was glowing really bright and red she leaned across the table till Shaw could see the deep cleft between her breasts. She was very well built in that respect; Shaw kept his eyes and his thoughts steadily on those voluptuous mounds of flesh when the cigarette came down on the back of one of his clenched fists and burned in deep.
The girl kept it there and leaned right across to take another pull in situ to keep it glowing. Through a mist of pain, the breasts seemed to loom over Shaw like flesh-pink balloons at a children’s party.
Rencke’s mouth was half-way open now, the over-red lips drawn back in a curious snarl to show the gold teeth nestling among the pearls. Rencke was enjoying this; there was a sweat of consummated sadism on his forehead. Thixey asked, “Well, old man?”
“Spalinski,” Shaw said between his teeth, “didn’t say a word more. And, if he had, I wouldn’t tell you.”
“Well spoken, indeed.” Thixey murmured. “Very British, very old-school-tie and white-man’s-burden and all that, but, like so much else we used to value, it’s also just a trifle old-fashioned these days and extremely foolish as well. Take the fag-end away, Beatty, there’s a good girl.” Beatty did as she was told. Shaw felt the sweat running down his face. The two men still held his arms and Thixey’s Luger was still aimed at the middle of his rib-cage. The American asked, “Don’t intend to leave it at that, Mr. Thixey, do you?”
There was a barely perceptible pause before Thixey answered easily. “He may be telling the simple truth, you know, Horn. We know Spalinski didn’t have long to talk to him.” He glanced at Rencke. “Right?”
“Right so far,” Rencke said thickly. “But it is still my belief that Spalinski had time for saying more than Shaw has told us.”
Beatty said suddenly, “Too flaming right!” She turned to Thixey. “Hilary, Mr. Rencke’s right. Dead right. Don’t you stick yer neck out for this joker. You know the orders.”
“Of course.” Thixey, Shaw felt, didn’t like the agony angle all that much; he wasn’t basically a sadist like Rencke and Beatty, but he wasn’t strong enough to swim too far against the tide. “All right, we’ll move into Stage Two, then. Tell Kortweiler, Horn.”
“Okay.” Horn let go Shaw’s arm; so did Moss. Horn dug his gun into Shaw’s spine, hard. “On your feet, Limey.”
Shaw got up. As he did so, he side-stepped, neat and fast, grabbed hold of Horn and swung the man in front of Ms body, with one hand like a vice on the American’s gun-wrist. He twisted and the gun dropped. Shaw flung Horn smack into Moss, bent quickly and picked up the revolver. Rencke fired and missed by a hair’s-breadth. Then Shaw had both Rencke and Thixey covered, and as Moss and Horn picked themselves up from the floor he backed away to the door.
Thixey looked undecided as to whether or not to chance beating Shaw to the next bullet, and it was Beatty who decided the issue. As quick as light she had reached inside her skirt and Shaw never even saw the lightweight leather thong flicking through the air towards him before it had wMpped the gun from Ms hand. Beatty jerked the gun towards her and levelled it at Shaw just as Horn and Moss were closing in again.
After that Thixey took charge.
“Leave it!” he rapped as the two men looked like starting to rough Shaw up. Then his tone became bantering. “Calm yourselves, gentlemen! Leave it to Kortweiler.” He walked over towards Shaw. “Don’t try that sort of thing again, old man. It really doesn’t pay, you know. Beatty’s a useful girl to have around. She used to work in a circus, hence the handiness with the wMp.” He glanced at the American and said, “Right-ho, Horn.”
Horn got behind Shaw and this time the prod of the gun was full of meaning and intent. Horn ordered him out of the room and once again they headed for the cellar, this time in full possession, with Moss, Thixey and the girl astern of them. Only Rencke remained behind. As they came up to the cellar door Horn pressed a switch outside and they went on down into light. For the first time Shaw was able to take a full, unhurried look at the place. There was something he hadn’t been aware of in the darkness that had followed close on last night’s fall into the coal, or in the faint flickers of daylight through the grille that morning, and this was a heavy manhole cover in the floor of the cellar with, above it, what looked gruesomely like a makeshift gallows.
Thixey seemed about to say something concerning this gallows when Moss uttered. “Here’s Kortweiler,” he said.
There was a shuffling sound on the stone steps and Shaw, turning, saw a dwarf descending into the cellar. This dwarf had a long, dead-white face, and enormous hands dangling by Ms sides, and he was dressed entirely in black. Beneath a scalp as bald as Rencke,’s he wore a mask, his eyes reflecting the light, beadily, through the slits. Only the axe was missing from the picture.…
Maybe, Shaw thought, this latter-day executioner was another circus turn, like Beatty.
Already in America certain preliminary precautions had been taken. Units of the United States Sixth Fleet, detailed as the recovery force for the Skyprobe project and standing by in Key West, had been ordered to sea and were proceeding at full speed for the splashdown area in the Caribbean in case the programme should have to be speeded up. Only the Commanding Officers and certain senior specialists in the ships knew that they might be called upon actually to pick up the capsule ahead of time; all other personnel, as well as the Press, had been told that the early movement was merely part of an exercise designed to eliminate any possible hitch in the smooth progress of America’s biggest-ever prestige probe into space. The only exceptions in the lower echelons were those men, including aircraft crews, whose job it would be to operate the equipment that would be watching out for any hostile submarines in the area.
TEN
As Kortweiler reached the bottom of the steps Thixey nodded at Moss; Moss and Horn lined up on either side of Shaw. Kortweiler moved round behind and gave him a sudden violent blow in the small of his back while Horn neatly kicked his feet from under him. Moss and Horn grabbed his shoulders and lowered him to the floor of the cellar. While Horn knelt on his chest, Moss looped readymade lengths of rope over his wrists and ankles. These were hauled taut to heavy iron ring-bolts set in the stone floor. Looking detached, Kortweiler moved away.
Moss looked up. “All ready,” he reported.
Thixey’s face looked white in the glare from the bare electric blub hanging from the centre of the ceiling. He said, “Right-ho, Mossy,” then addressed Shaw. “Now look here, old man. I do want you to realize we’re going to make you talk. There’s really no sense whatever in your being noble and undergoing a lot of discomfort, because you’re bound to crack in the end. You know that as well as I do. We’re all human, old man.”