XVII

THE SAFE

Rollison couldn’t shut the glimpse of the woman’s naked hatred out of his mind. He couldn’t understand why she should say ‘yes’. He didn’t like turning with his back to her, for she might shoot.

He smiled, as if at a life-long friend.

‘Or would you like to try? After all, it’s more your safe than mine.’

‘Open it,’ she said harshly.

She didn’t move from the arm of the chair. She was ten feet away from him, too far for him to hope to disarm her, unpleasantly close for accurate marksmanship; if she shot to kill, she could hardly miss.

He shrugged.

‘Don’t you want to come and see how it’s done?’

‘I want to see if you can do it.’

He turned slowly. He had a glimpse of her, steady and calm, gun-hand raised, the automatic now trained on his side.

He turned his back on her; and could hardly breathe.

There was no other sound.

He took three steps towards the safe, and felt as if his hair were standing on end. He was cold at the forehead and the nape of the neck, and his hands were clammy. He knelt down, slowly; it was like kneeling before the executioner’s block.

She didn’t move, and she didn’t shoot.

He used the small key, first – then glanced round. She was leaning forward, so that she could see better, but the gun remained steady. At least, she really wanted him to open the safe. But what would happen when it was open? He could see the dark pit of death yawning in front of him. If he unlocked the safe, she could take out whatever she wanted – and if she shot him, she would have every reason. It was a legal act to shoot a man who had forced a way in and was opening one’s safe.

He turned the key; there was a faint click, nothing to suggest that the lock hadn’t turned. He slid the second in, and hesitated – and then turned with a quick twist of the fingers and coughed at the same time, to cover any sound. The key turned easily. All he had to do now was to pull at the handle of the safe, and it would open.

‘What’s the matter?’ she asked abruptly.

‘Open it – it’s all yours.’

‘Is it unlocked?’

‘It is, if those keys will unlock it.’

‘Open the door,’ she ordered.

She was looking intently at him, and the smile had gone from her eyes, their expression was one of unholy expectation; she came forward a step.

He felt quite sure that once she knew that the door was open, she would shoot him. He felt like a sitting bird. He coughed again, overdoing it and going red in the face. He snatched at his pocket, as if for a handkerchief, bending down at the same time. He pulled out his gun and plunged forward.

She fired.

Her face was a twisted mask, and hatred glittered in her eyes. The bullet plucked at the carpet – and his leg. He fired at her gun, and the whole of the future seemed to hang on that shot. It roared, flame flashed – and she cried out and flung her hand up. Her gun curved an arc, and hit the wall and dropped heavily to the floor. She clapped one hand about her wrist.

The echoes of the shots faded.

Rollison stood up and walked towards her gun, making no sound.

The window was open; and the maid was in the flat. The shots must have been heard. Yet the silence remained, tense as the moment before the crack of thunder. He picked her gun up and slipped it into his pocket, and she stood watching him, lips beginning to twitch.

Otherwise, she didn’t move. There was no blood; he’d hit the gun.

A voice sounded, ‘Madame – madame, wake—oh!’

That was a scream, cut short; the maid was in the next room.

Rollison whispered, ‘Talk to her.’

The maid had seen the empty bed, and the bookcase door was open an inch; that was why they could hear her. How had she got in? Rollison stepped close to the wall, covering the woman with his gun. She approached the bookcase door.

The maid began to gasp.

The woman said, ‘Elsa, it’s all right – I thought someone was in here, but I was wrong. Go back to bed.’

‘Oh, madame!’ The girl sobbed.

Mrs. Woolf went to the bookcase door, opened it wider, and spoke soothingly; she had complete control of herself again. She let her wrenched wrist fall to her side.

‘It’s all right, Elsa, go back to your room.’

Rollison saw a door in the next room – a communicating door from the woman’s room to her maid’s.

‘Oh, madame, I was frightened!’

‘Yes, I know, but there’s no need to be.’

Rollison heard the maid’s dragging footsteps; and then a door closed.

The woman shut the bookcase door.

She turned to face Rollison – and looked as she had done when he had first seen her. Superbly beautiful and smiling, as if that venomous rage had never existed. He began to wonder if she were sane; but would an insane person have been able to treat the maid like that?

There was no sound from the street; no police.

She said quietly, ‘I think I’m beginning to believe in lucky stars, no one else seems to have heard that.’

‘Next door—’ Rollison began.

‘They are away, for the summer, the flat is empty.’

‘Upstairs?’

‘We’ve heard nothing, and we could hear if anyone were moving about.’ She glanced at the ceiling, then approached him, relaxed and smiling. ‘You’re better than I thought in some ways, but not so good in others, Toff. You’re nervous.’

‘That’s right,’ said Rollison. ‘I don’t like beautiful women who go about using guns – it kills my faith in human nature.’

‘I should hate to do that. Aren’t you going to look in the safe, now you’ve opened it?’

‘No. You are.’

She shrugged, and went towards the safe, and he covered her. She had no gun, but he didn’t trust her. There might be another gun in the safe. He moved to that he could see over her shoulder when she was kneeling down – and she had to kneel on one knee in order to pull at the handle.

He said, ‘Wait a minute.’

She paused.

‘If you and your husband have anything in common, it’s devilishness,’ he said. ‘Keep to one side when you pull the door open.’

She looked round – and she seemed to be younger, almost a girl; her eyes were dancing with real amusement.

‘Why? Are you still nervous?’

‘I just don’t trust Woolfs. Keep to one side, and pull the door slowly.’

She obeyed, so that she was facing him. In spite of her words, she was as nervous as he, seemed to have difficulty in plucking up her courage to pull the door open. She tugged; it was heavy, placed like that she couldn’t get much force behind her arm. When it opened, it would swing towards her.

She pulled again.

The door opened – and a stab of flame hissed out, there was a coughing sound, followed by a dull thud at the other end of the room. A bullet buried itself in the panelling.

The woman knelt there, as if transfixed, staring at the door.

Rollison said softly, ‘The old trick, trust Leo to think of it.’

He went across and stood by her side, convinced that for once she was completely dumbfounded, had been shocked to numbness. He was careful as he pulled the door wider open. Inside, at the top, the pistol had been rigged so that a shot was fired whenever the door was opened; he could see the little wire which ought to have been pushed to one side for the door to be opened without the shot being fired.

The safe stood wide open, at last.

The woman said, ‘The—devil!’

She was shivering, and her voice quivered. She got up slowly, and leaned against Rollison. He kept his gun-hand free, but he didn’t think there was any danger from her for a moment.

She drew her head back.

There was no sound outside, the shots hadn’t been heard – but at any moment a car might turn the corner and pull up.

She said chokingly, ‘I’ll kill him. I’ll kill him.’

‘No love for Leo?’

‘Love? I’ve hated him for years. He’s fooled, tricked, and cheated me. He’s humiliated me before my friends. He laughs and sneers and reviles me, and thinks I’ll always come to heel. Well, he’s wrong. He’s been wrong for a long time, but he didn’t know it. I’ll break him – I’ll kill him!’

What would she say if she knew that Woolf was dead?

‘Why not humiliate him? Break him that way?’ He smiled into her eyes. ‘It would be easy, wouldn’t it?’

She didn’t answer.

‘He’s framed a girl for Keller’s murder. Why not help to prove that he was behind it?’

The words came casually, he turned away.

‘Save her? Not in a thousand years!’

He didn’t speak.

‘You fool, Rollison, you don’t know him. He gets what he wants from every woman he likes, and then gets rid of them. Somehow – anyhow. That’s what he thinks he’s done with me. I’m just a cover for him, a cover of respectability, the good wife in the background. I’m too old for my fine Leo – much too old. He likes them young. This Lane girl – they had a wonderful time for a few weeks, she thought he was in love with her. She was one of those who helped to take him away. Help her? I’d gladly watch her hang.’

She stopped.

As he watched her, he heard a car approaching, some way off. It was the first sound he had heard from outside since he had come here. The noise set his nerves jangling, playing on them as if they were raw. He stared at the woman, and hoped that she would not notice the tension in him. The car slowed down and turned a corner – and came this way. He moved because the stillness was unbearable.

It was almost outside, now.

It passed.

He took a whisky bottle from the cabinet.

‘Have a drink,’ he said. He ran his hand over his forehead, and it came away damp. ‘Whisky – or brandy?’

He poured her a whisky, added a splash of soda, and handed it to her. She drank it almost without realising what she was doing. He helped himself.

He lit cigarettes for them both.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘Let the Lane girl hang. Leo will get away with that, as he’s got away with everything else. And you’ll have missed a chance to see him in the dock, to hear the judge pass sentence.’

She looked at him from smouldering eyes, but the red-hot flame of hatred had slackened a little. She forced a laugh, and moved away from him.

‘What’s the Lane girl mean to you?’

‘Just a girl who’s had a raw deal.’

‘She couldn’t have one raw enough. You don’t know her. She’s as hard as they’re made. Bad, do you understand, bad right through. I know Elizabeth Lane.’ She drew at her cigarette, and her recovery was almost complete, there was mockery in her eyes – and that unnatural glint. ‘You’ve fallen for her, haven’t you? You’ve risked your own neck to save hers. I wouldn’t lift a finger to do that, but I might help you.’

He didn’t speak.

‘So you know Leo framed her. I wonder how well you know Leo. I wonder how you discovered that he was behind it. Oh, forget it, I don’t care.’ She went across to a chair, watching him. ‘Why, you’re handsome,’ she said, as if surprised. ‘Your photographs don’t do you justice, they make you look too old.’

She was talking about photographs. The open safe was near him, and he was listening to her while he could be going through its contents. But he knew that she could tell him what he most wanted to know, she could prove that Woolf had framed Marion-Liz.

‘You’re not exactly an old hag yourself,’ he said.

She laughed softly.

‘But you prefer them young, like the Lane girl. Oh, don’t lie, it’s not worth lying. If he were gone, perhaps I could start to live again, but—’

She broke off.

Rollison said, ‘Supposing we find out what’s in the safe. What do you want from it?’

‘Anything I can find about him,’ she said, but the passion wasn’t in her voice, she could switch that on and off; had it been acting all the time? Surely that wasn’t possible. ‘He’s as corrupt as the Devil himself, and the secrets of that safe could damn him. If I can get them, I’ll send him to hell. I’ll make him writhe and squirm, I’ll make him do what I want, I’ll let him know what it’s like to live the way I’ve lived. Open it. Take everything out.’

He turned, and bent down.

He didn’t know what warned him, but glanced round at her – as a knife swept towards his back.