The Touch of Death Read online

  Slowly, forcing himself, he went into each room; and the flat was empty. There was no trace, that he could see, of anyone else – except a faint smell of cigar smoke; he didn’t smoke cigars.

  He felt weak, and still foolish. His shoulder ached rather than hurt. So did his arm where he had first been wounded. He dropped into the large armchair in the living-room – and then he got up hurriedly, went into the bedroom and looked for the broken chair.

  It wasn’t there.

  Banister came back and stared stupidly at the telephone for several minutes, then lifted it and dialled O.

  “Can I help you?” the operator asked.

  “I—” He paused again. “I’m sorry. Can you—can you tell me what date it is?”

  “February 20th,” said the operator briskly. “Are you having any difficulty with your telephone, sir?”

  “What? Er—no. No, I—”

  “What number are you trying to get?”

  “Number?” Banister caught his breath, realised that he sounded as if he were out of his wits. “Sorry again. But get me Scotland Yard, will you—in a hurry.”

  He knew the name of Superintendent Gillick of New Scotland Yard. Gillick was one of the Big Five, perhaps better known to the general public than any other member of the Criminal Investigation Department. At first it didn’t appear odd to Banister that such a celebrity should come to see him. Even the big shots had to handle small affairs, or those which looked unpromising at the beginning.

  Gillick was big and portly and gave the impression of being unimaginative. But his comments and questions were shrewd; Banister didn’t run away with the idea that he was a fool. Gillick listened to Banister’s statement with hardly any outward sign of surprise, had him describe the men and the blonde girl – whose name he had never heard – and wanted a particularly careful description of the grey-haired man.

  Banister did his best.

  Gillick had brought a police-surgeon with him, and the wounds were examined. The cut in the arm wasn’t serious, but the stab in the shoulder needed much more dressing and attention.

  “You’d better go to hospital with that,” said the police-surgeon. “As an out-patient, of course. Only satisfactory way of dealing with it.”

  “We’ll give you a chit,” Gillick said in his rumbling voice. “Save you hanging about too much. Draughty places, hospitals. Now, let’s go back to the night you ran into this queer business . . .”

  That was the moment when Banister first realised that Gillick didn’t believe him; or pretended not to. It was nothing that Gillick actually said – except by implication. It was in his manner, his eyes, his hands. “Yes, yes, I see,” he would say, with a kind of controlled impatience. Yet he wanted to know every detail, even asked the colour of the eyes of the people and what their teeth were like. It was almost as if he were trying to catch Banister out, for he asked the same questions time and time again, sometimes with two days in between.

  “Let me see, now, this blonde girl—platinum blonde hair, didn’t you say?”

  “Yellow.”

  “Oh, yes, sorry. What colour were her eyes?”

  “Big, blue eyes.”

  “And the big fellow—” Gillick had a funny little smile, a

  “I know it’s not really amusing but let’s pretend it is then we’ll get along” kind of smile. He gave it then. “And the big fellow, the larger-than-life chap?”

  “Brown eyes.”

  “Sure?”

  “I am quite sure,” Banister said stiffly.

  The sergeant who was with them all the time, whenever they met – and for the next three days they met seven or eight times – made his shorthand notes industriously. Each day, a typewritten sheet was brought to Banister, for him to read and sign. Everything was accurate. The feeling that he wasn’t believed not only remained but became stronger. It gave him a curiously guilty kind of feeling.

  There appeared to be a kind of conspiracy to disbelieve him.

  On the evening of the third day Gillick telephoned.

  “We’ll do everything we can, Mr. Banister, and if we get any news at all, we’ll let you know. Meanwhile I hope that shoulder goes along all right.” The rumbling voice paused. “Good-night.”

  When he put the receiver down, Banister thought: “I shan’t hear from him again.”

  He didn’t.

  This conspiracy of disbelief was real – and made everything else unreal. The world had become a place of fantasy. Nothing that had happened was credible or real but – it had happened. That crack, as the chair leg broke; that anguish in the blue eyes of the blonde girl; the swift pattering of the keys of the typewriter; the “Why, Neil,” of the old man, as if he were speaking with hurt protest.

  The trouble was that Banister had no one to talk to about it.

  He didn’t go to the sales rooms for ten days, and when he did arrive, the manager was very friendly and amiable but regretful. Business wasn’t so good, Banister would understand, wouldn’t he, if he were suspended – only until business was better, of course.

  That wasn’t a disaster; but it wasn’t pleasing.

  The following day, Banister went to the hospital – the Westminster – for the last time. A capable nurse assured him that his shoulder would now be perfectly all right.

  He left the hospital, walked towards the nearest paper boy, bought a newspaper – and stood stock still.

  A man banged into him, and glared.

  Banister hardly noticed him.

  On the front page of the Evening News was a photograph of the Prime Minister with another man. A familiar man – a man with grey hair which had once been fouled with blood, and a face which Banister was sure he would remember until his dying day.

  The caption beneath the photograph read:

  “The Prime Minister outside Number 10 Downing Street with Professor Monk-Gilbert, Britain’s foremost nuclear scientist.”

  Banister had seen a man with Monk-Gilbert’s face – dead. He had also seen a man with his face alive, calling him Neil, pretending to be an old friend.

  He folded the paper up and walked towards Piccadilly. He couldn’t think clearly. Something was gravely wrong, but he couldn’t put a name to it, and couldn’t see that he could do a thing.

  Then he thought of Paul Harris.

  Harris, a war-years acquaintance, was a private inquiry agent with offices in Fleet Street. Once the thought came, Banister was astonished that he hadn’t thought of going to him before.

  Harris was tall, hatchet-thin, keen-eyed.

  He listened intently.

  “The way you put it, Neil, it’s really something,” he said. “I’ll do everything I can – and don’t start arguing already. I know you’ll want a fist in it yourself! But let me look round, first. This colossus, now—”

  Banister went home, excited at the prospect of getting somewhere at last. He probably wouldn’t have troubled again but for the photograph of Monk-Gilbert. He waited up until midnight, but heard nothing and turned in. From eight o’clock next morning, he was on edge for the telephone bell to ring and Harris to promise news.

  Harris rang up at half-past ten.

  “Neil, old chap, I’m sorry, but I find I can’t handle that little problem of yours. Awful lot of work in. If I were you, I’d drop it.”

  “Listen, Paul, you can’t—”

  “I’m having a dreadful morning,” Harris said apologetically. It was the same attitude as Gillick’s, but more obvious: he didn’t believe this story. “We must have a drink soon. So long.”

  He rang off.

  After a few minutes, Banister said aloud: “Gillick’s warned him off. But why?”

  That was the day when Banister first realised that he was being followed. He probably wouldn’t have known it, if he hadn’t been in such a fo
ul temper. He could not understand why anyone should refuse to believe him. He was walking towards St. James’s Park along a narrow street leading from Wickham Mews, when he remembered he needed his chequebook; his mood had made him forget it. He had turned round sharply. A man in a navy blue suit suddenly stopped, and pretended to be lighting a cigarette.

  The man followed him.

  Wherever Banister went, the fellow in navy blue went also. He was thin-faced, lantern-jawed, well-dressed, rather sleek-looking. In a way, a vague kind of way, he reminded Banister of the men of the photographs which the American had expected him to identify.

  Banister returned to his flat, and looked out of the window.

  The man in blue was there, lighting a cigarette.

  By nightfall, the man had gone, but another was in his place. Banister went out, deliberately, to make sure. He also took a gun, an old Colt which he had had for years. He had no ammunition for it, but didn’t think that would be necessary. He was quite fit again now. He walked briskly. At last he went up to the man and spoke.

  “What the hell do you think you’re playing at?”

  “Eh?” asked the man. He was a plumpish, round-faced fellow, not at all like the one in navy blue. “Free world.”

  “Why are you following me about?”

  “Following you?”

  “You ruddy well know you are!”

  “Dear chap,” said the plumpish man, “your error.”

  His blandness was infuriating.

  Everywhere he went, Banister was followed.

  On buses, in taxis, in restaurants, at Twickenham for an International, on the way to several interviews for a new job – he didn’t get it – everywhere. It began to wear at his nerves. He had to talk to someone; had to confide.

  If only Rita . . .

  He began to think about Rita again, but not very deeply. He simply wanted a confidante. He couldn’t keep this story to himself much longer. But there was another thing he had to remember; he probably wouldn’t be believed. Now that he looked back at it, the whole business seemed crazy, fantastic; the kind of thing that he might have dreamed up.

  He almost began to wonder whether it had happened.

  He hadn’t even the broken pieces of the chair as evidence.

  For a long time he had felt solitary and lonely. Sixty-five days “After Rita”, thirty-nine days after Gillick, he began to feel morose and worried about himself; was there something wrong with his mind? Whenever he felt like that, he took out the newspaper cutting of the Prime Minister and Professor Monk-Gilbert.

  Monk-Gilbert, he knew, had flown to Australia.

  But a man like Monk-Gilbert . . .

  A day or two later a story in the Evening News jolted him. A man’s body had been found in an alley in the East End of London. No one had seen him go there, no one had seen him die, the doctors could not explain the cause of death, but one witness at the inquest, who lived close to the spot where the body had been found, said simply: “I didn’t hear anything, but I did see a flash.”

  Banister remembered the flash he had seen before losing consciousness.

  Other things worked on his mind during this same period. Probably because he knew about Monk-Gilbert, he became sensitive to any news about scientists. It was startling to find how many were in the news. Small paragraphs in the newspapers seemed to be repeated time and time again, such as:

  Well-known Scientist Dead or

  Scientist Disappears or

  Atom-Man to Emigrate

  Because this puzzled him and he became so obsessed, he looked through the files of two London newspapers for the past year. At least fifty scientists had died; or disappeared; or left England. There were also seven references to men dying after mysterious flashes had been seen.

  The possible significance of this wore on his nerves still more.

  And everywhere he was followed.

  He flung himself out of the flat on an evening at the end of March. The plumpish man followed him. He reached the Bini Club, where Rita and he had spent a lot of time. It was a night-club, but opened for luncheons and dinners; a genuine club with the usual stolid members and few hangers-on. A little betting was done illegally, there was known to be a room for chemin de fer but no one played for high stakes. It was “all right”; the police had never raided it.

  He ordered a whisky-and-soda, and tossed it down.

  He ordered another, and it went the same way.

  He saw two or three other people at the bar, and a girl by herself. He knew her slightly. Her name was Pam something-or-other, not very exceptional – Brown, Jones, Robinson, that kind of name. She was a pleasant and pretty little thing, usually one of a crowd.

  She came and sat beside him.

  “You look as if you’re going to make a night of it, Neil.”

  “That’s me. Same again,” he said to the bar-keeper.

  “Why?”

  “Masculine privilege.”

  “Rita still hurts?”

  He looked at her levelly, and his voice was not amiable.

  “As you so rightly say, Pamela, Rita still hurts. You perceive the bare surface of the tortured human soul. I don’t wish to discuss Rita. Have a drink.”

  “Thank you, Neil.” She ordered a gin-and-it. She really was rather pretty, and had a good figure – the kind of figure one only began to appreciate after a little while. She had rather nice brown eyes, too, and a pleasant voice.

  They had dinner together three times in the next week. Pam began to make him feel more human. He was on the point of telling her what had happened, but she might not believe it, and he couldn’t bear to be laughed at. There was an eeriness, a sense of mystery, a sense of expectancy – at times it was almost fear.

  Pam rang up, ten days after they’d first met at the Bini Club.

  “Neil, there’s a little restaurant in Soho I’d love to go to, do you think you could make it one day this week? For dinner. My dinner!”

  “No.”

  “Oh,” Pam said, startled. “Why not?”

  “My dinner.”

  “Very well, sir,” she said with a mock quality of demureness, “a Victorian maid I will be, for once. When will it please your masterfulness?”

  It was all very trite and light and flippant, but it had a warmth about it, too.

  “Tonight.”

  “Call for me at seven,” Pam said.

  He called for her promptly. They had a drink at the Bini, another at the tiny bar of the Soho restaurant, then dinner in a small room upstairs with three other couples, a perfect meal cooked by a French chef whose sauces were perfection. Everything was exactly right, and Pam was at her brightest. They laughed a lot. Banister wasn’t drunk, not even slightly tipsy, but he was in a light-hearted mood.

  He discovered that the room was empty. . . .

  He kissed her – not for the first time, although more passionately than before. She laughed lightly, jumped up, and then walked through the wall.

  That was how it looked to Banister. One moment Pam was in the room, walking straight towards the wall; next, she was going through it. Of course, a door which he hadn’t noticed before had opened. Laughing, he hurried after her.

  He went through the door, but Pam wasn’t in the room beyond.

  There were three men. One was the little American, the other the giant, the third a man whom Banister had never seen before.

  Chapter 4

  Banister stopped quite still. The door closed behind him, although he didn’t notice it. Another door closed in a corner; he thought fleetingly that Pam had gone through there; and Pam had lured him here.

  The American was sitting at a table; grinning. He looked as tough a nut as one would find anywhere. It was something in his manner as well as in his brown, weather-beaten face. His ey
es looked like dark-blue enamel.

  The giant wasn’t smiling, but he looked amiable.

  The third man was in the middle. He was in the middle according to size, too. Not particularly handsome, he was impressive looking, and would have been more so but for a rather weak chin. His fair hair curled a little and looked very thin and silky. His eyelids drooped, making him look lazy or perhaps tired. His mouth was well-shaped, and curved a little, as if he saw some obscure joke.

  There was nothing sinister about him.

  “Hallo,” he said. “Sorry we’ve been so abrupt – and that isn’t the first apology we owe you. Come and sit down, won’t you – and try this brandy.”

  Banister went forward slowly. There was an empty chair. He sat down. The American said: “He’ll do,” quite mysteriously, and the giant smiled faintly. The man in the middle looked pleased.

  “My name is Palfrey,” he said. “Dr. Stanislaus Alexander Palfrey.”

  Banister realised that all of them were looking at him more closely; there was some tension in the air. It was because of the name – or rather, because of his expected reaction to it. He thought he had heard the name before, but couldn’t think where.

  “This is Cornelius Bruton,” the man named Palfrey went on, after the tension relaxed.

  “Hi, Neil,” the American said.

  “And this, Stefan Andromovitch,” Palfrey added with a quick glance at the giant. “Late of Moscow.”

  The Russian’s hand was offered. Banister took it. As he did so, he remembered the breaking chair legs. The Russian’s grip was firm and powerful, but there was nothing to suggest the remarkable strength in the fingers and wrists – except their size.

  “And where,” asked Banister dryly, “is Professor Monk-Gilbert or his double?”

  Palfrey’s lips curved more noticeably in response. Bruton put a match to his cigar, which had gone out. Palfrey sniffed the bouquet of his brandy, without taking his eyes from Banister. Then he said: “Monk-Gilbert died. You stumbled over his body. He was killed by two men who attacked you – and whom we caught some weeks later. They refused to make any statement. We do not know much about them. They are British nationals, but we don’t know who employed them, who paid them for their assassins’ work. We want to find out.”