The Touch of Death Read online

  There was a long silence.

  “You don’t miss much,” Palfrey said, at last. “Yes, that’s it. We feel sure that believing they’ve failed, they’ll try on ‘Monk-Gilbert’ again. We’ll give you all the protection we can, but can’t guarantee a thing. We can’t even make sure that you’re still insulated.”

  “Is Monk-Gilbert’s stooge coming with me to the different mines?” asked Banister abruptly.

  “Yes. And at first he’ll be the main target,” Palfrey said. “Have you the slightest idea why Monk-Gilbert was near your flat?”

  “No.”

  “We think he might have gone hoping to see his niece.” Palfrey was very soft-voiced. “You know her.”

  Banister had a feeling that a bomb was about to burst . . .

  “Monk-Gilbert was Rita Morrell’s uncle,” Palfrey said.

  Chapter 5

  Banister went through a series of medical examinations, blood-tests, allergy reactions, but no guide to his immunity could be found. At the same time, he began a short period of intense training.

  The technical side was only touched upon lightly; he did not need to know much. In any case, his mind wouldn’t take the facts and figures in. Nuclear energy, radioactivity, splitting atoms, generating heat which could vaporise steel – he believed in them all, but couldn’t grasp the mechanics of them all.

  He also learned how to walk along a street and find out whether he was followed; how to tell if a car were following him; how to judge whether he was being watched from a window which seemed blank and empty. He learned judo; learned to turn on a sixpence, shoot on the draw, throw a knife, use a cosh – all of these things, until he was expert.

  He learned how to regard Rita as a possible enemy. She was still out of England, but Palfrey did not know where.

  Above all, he learned to lie.

  He learned what one had to do to make a lie sound like the truth. He learned not to lie until he had seen in advance all the implications, all the things he would have to say afterwards to make the lie seem as honest as the day. He didn’t like this, either, but knew that it had to be done.

  Over a three months’ period, he learned to think of the man who had come to his flat and called him Neil, as the real Monk- Gilbert. He talked of him as Monk-Gilbert, to him as Monk- Gilbert, thought of him as Monk-Gilbert. He had his photograph taken a dozen times with the fake scientist. He himself became “Dr.” Banister; all his credentials were faked. He almost came to believe in himself as a specialist with at least the qualifications of the dead Monk-Gilbert.

  The most difficult thing was to see the real Monk-Gilbert as Rita’s uncle.

  Now and again he saw Bruton or Palfrey; he didn’t see the Russian again. No one talked to him about any other activity of Palfrey’s group, which was known as Z.5. He had to concentrate on this activity to the exclusion of everything else. He was told now and again of another indication that fatalis had been used.

  Three months after starting his training, he saw Palfrey again in a house in Mayfair. Palfrey looked exactly the same, except that this time it was the middle afternoon, and he held a cup of tea instead of a brandy glass.

  “It’s on from now, Neil.” His voice was casual and calm, nothing suggested that he was conscious of the nightmare horror of the possibility of sudden death striking at anyone, anywhere, any time. “You and Monk-Gilbert leave for Canada tomorrow. You’ll fly, of course. You’re going to inspect the Quebec and the Saskatchewan uranium fields. A car will call for you at six in the morning, and you’ll meet Monk-Gilbert at the airfield. Bruton and Andromovitch are out of the country, but they ask me to say au revoir, bon voyage, all the usual things.”

  He put out his hand. His grip was cool and very firm.

  “God be with you,” he said.

  “Thanks,” grunted Banister, and turned away.

  Odd thing, that; one didn’t associate Palfrey, Z.5, Secret Service, violence, lying, duplicity, forms of treachery and all that kind of thing with an earnest, obviously a sincere: “God be with you.” In an odd way, it said much more than that. Palfrey had a way of saying a great deal by implications and by innuendo – he could even convey a lot by a smile. “God be with you,” had stated that Palfrey believed in God, that he didn’t regard himself as an all-powerful genius sitting in the centre of the world-wide web of Z.5.

  In the cold morning light he met Monk-Gilbert at the airfield next day. They took off at seven-thirty. Twelve hours later they were at Idlewild Airport, on Long Island. They transferred to a smaller aircraft and were in Quebec within twenty hours of leaving London.

  “We’re going to see one or two of the leading scientists here,” Monk-Gilbert said, “and probably leave for the uranium fields in the morning. No reason why we shouldn’t relax a bit.” For a man of sixty, he kept extraordinarily fit. “I’ve never been here before, let’s do a bit of sight-seeing.”

  “All right,” Banister said.

  They strolled through the steep, narrow streets, past small houses with colourful roofs, small windows, French architecture. They heard more French than English spoken in both streets and shops. It was cold, but dry and clear. Two Security men walked behind them, casually, and a woman was also watching; it was like being surrounded by an unseen barrier.

  They passed the Château Frontenac in its dark grandeur, strolled across to the wooden platform of the embankment overlooking the St. Lawrence and watched the evening sun glistening on the calm surface of the water.

  Then Banister felt danger. . . .

  It came from a girl.

  She was an attractive creature, tall, dark-haired; not unlike Rita. She walked casually, as if in no hurry. She was alone. As Banister and Monk-Gilbert drew nearer, she turned towards the railings overlooking the river, and leaned against them.

  Banister felt as if a sixth sense were warning him. There were several other strangers about, but the girl seemed to matter most.

  “Move round her,” he said to Monk-Gilbert, who looked sideways, startled. “Give her a wide berth.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t like—” began Banister.

  She darted forward. Her hand was bare, and outstretched. Banister stepped swiftly between her and Monk-Gilbert, and their hands touched. Hers was smooth and cold.

  In that moment, he stood at the door of death – and fear chilled him, heart, mind and body.

  But he lived.

  Once fear had gone, he had time to look into the girl’s dark eyes – and saw stupefaction in them. She had expected him to collapse, was astounded that he hadn’He snatched at her hand, she saw her danger, twisted round, pulled herself free, and ran down the slope towards a car which was parked in the road. Two of the Security men approached her, bewildered passers-by stood watching.

  She tried to dodge the Security men, and nearly succeeded before one of them grabbed her hand.

  There was a vivid flash, far brighter than a magnesium flare, a choking cry – and the man who had touched the girl reeled away from her and fell. The other man recoiled as the girl ran wildly down the wooden slope. A car was waiting for her, the rear door open. Banister could have raced after her, but as he moved, he saw the gun in the hand of the driver of the car.

  He spun round.

  “Get down!” he cried, pushing Monk-Gilbert savagely. “Get—”

  There were three shots. Bullets flashed above Banister’s head and over Monk-Gilbert. Then the car engine roared, the door slammed on the girl, and the car roared off, with police already moving towards it. One leapt into the road, arms spread, shouting at the driver to stop. The car didn’t even swerve, and the policeman leapt towards the side, struck the kerb and went flying.

  The car screeched round a corner.

  On the boards of the promenade a man lay dead. Another man was moving towards him.

 
“Don’t touch him!” Banister called urgently. “Don’t touch him.”

  “Why—”

  “We mustn’t touch him for at least an hour,” Banister cried. “Can you get the promenade cleared, a cordon of police thrown round?”

  The Security man looked sick.

  “What—what is it?”

  “Can you get the promenade cleared?” Banister roared.

  “Sure,” the Security man said huskily. “I’ll fix it.”

  He took another look at the man who had been walking by his side only a few minutes before, then set to work.

  Nothing else happened in Canada. Nothing was discovered at the uranium fields.

  Ten days later Banister and Monk-Gilbert landed at an airfield in Arizona, near a canyon where experimental work was being carried out on uranium. A car was at the airport to meet them.

  There were few cars on the road. They climbed a slight hill, travelling at seventy, breasted it – and saw the car coming towards them.

  “No!” gasped Banister.

  It was worse because there wasn’t a thing he could do. He heard Monk-Gilbert’s sharp intake of breath, and the gasp from the driver. The other car was just in front of them, leaping forward. Their driver swung his wheel, the head-on crash didn’t come.

  Banister felt the wheels skidding, heard them screaming, was flung to one side. Then he felt the crash as the back of the car struck the one that was heading for them. The screaming tyres sounded like furies in torment; the earth, the sky, the road, seemed to shiver and shake and crash into one another – the car lurched, swayed towards one side, steadied, then struck a rock and turned turtle.

  Banister was thrown heavily on to Monk-Gilbert.

  The driver gave a funny little rasping sound, and didn’t speak. He was dead.

  “Neil,” Monk-Gilbert said, hoarsely.

  “Yes?”

  “I can’t stand much more of it.”

  “There probably won’t be much more,” Banister said.

  “It’ll never stop,” Monk-Gilbert muttered. “And we don’t get anywhere. If we were getting results I wouldn’t mind. I can’t stand much more of it – just waiting to be shot at and knowing that if the tenth attack fails the eleventh will probably succeed.”

  “We’ve only had five.”

  “Only five,” Monk-Gilbert barked.

  There was a brittle note in his voice, and he looked much older than he had six months ago.

  They were in Australia, in a small house in the hills outside Adelaide. They had finished their work at uranium fields in the northern part of South Australia, had watched all the experimental work, found nothing which remotely resembled fatalis. New Zealand had only a small, experimental uranium field, but there was some report of peculiar incidents at Rotorua. Palfrey had cabled, in code, and asked them to go there.

  “I tell you I can’t keep it up much longer,” Monk-Gilbert said. His voice was husky and he coughed as he lit a cigarette. His eyes were veiny, largely because he was drinking too much whisky. His hand wasn’t steady even when he picked up a glass. “I’ll have to throw my hand in. I’ll never stop cursing the day that Palfrey discovered that I looked like Monk-Gilbert.”

  “Take it easy,” Banister reasoned, “it will probably end before long, and—”

  “Don’t talk like a congenital idiot! It’ll never end.” Monk-Gilbert jumped up and began to pace the room. “Haven’t you the sense to see that? It’ll never end—until they’ve killed us. And we don’t know a thing more than when we started. We haven’t caught anyone. That girl in Quebec—the driver in Arizona—the man in Samoa, Samoa of all places!—on the airfield at Sydney, then up near Darwin—” He stopped, swung round and snatched up the whisky bottle. ‘’I tell you I can’t stand it.”

  He strode across and stood towering over Banister, who sat in a large armchair, smoking a cigarette. Banister didn’t feel good, either. He was too hot. Even in the right weather life was a strain which he felt more every day; now Monk-Gilbert was making the situation ten times worse. He had shown signs of cracking at Samoa. They had put in there because of engine trouble with the aircraft they had flown in to Australia – and been attacked by night.

  Banister forced himself to smile as he wiped his wet forehead.

  “Have a drink, and sit down.”

  Monk-Gilbert sneered: “I thought you’d start warning me off the liquor. God, what do you use for blood? You’re not human, you’re—” He broke off, to cough, and the spluttering bout lasted for a long time. When it was over he wheezed noisily, and he was almost maudlin. “You’re lucky,” he said brokenly. “They can’t just touch your hand and kill you, but they can mine. You’re protected, but I—”

  “They’ve only tried fatalis once, in Quebec,” Banister said, “and I’m just as vulnerable to other methods of killing. You’ve got to see this through.”

  “Oh, have I?” Monk-Gilbert screamed at him. “To hell with that, to hell with you, to hell with Palfrey, to hell with the real Monk-Gilbert, to hell with—”

  He swung the bottle at Banister’s head.

  Banister thrust his arm aside, and clipped him under the chin. As Monk-Gilbert backed away, arms waving, mouth agape, Banister took the bottle away. He felt desperately sorry for the man, who wouldn’t last much longer. There were too many bouts like this.

  Twenty minutes later Monk-Gilbert was in bed, sleeping – snoring.

  Banister went back to the main room. Outside were the woods and the hills and the quiet, above them the stars and the promise of a hot day tomorrow – and tomorrow there was to be the flight to Rotorua. Monk-Gilbert ought not to go.

  Banister had told Palfrey what was happening, and Palfrey had acknowledged the reports but made no suggestions.

  It was one thing to talk to the scientist about keeping steady, about getting results; another to believe that results would come. They desperately needed prisoners who could lead them to the makers of fatalis. They were sticking their necks out so that they would be attacked and their assailants caught, but nothing had come off. The man in Samoa had been captured – and had died in prison, from poisoning.

  He and Monk-Gilbert were too much on their own.

  Security men were outside now, but they needed someone like Palfrey, Bruton, Andromovitch – someone with whom they could talk about fatalis. Banister himself was feeling the strain; Monk-Gilbert worsened it, that was all.

  Banister went to the door, and stepped outside.

  A Security man was near.

  “He’s quieter now, isn’t he?”

  “Sleeping,” said Banister.

  “Must be a strain, using your minds the way you scientists do,” said the Security man.

  “At times.”

  “I’ll bet. Staying in Australia long?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  That was always the answer. One could trust no one.

  “Wonderful country,” the Security man said. “Why, there can’t be a better-planned city than Adelaide anywhere.”

  He lit a cigarette, happily.

  “It’s fine,” Banister said mechanically. “I’m going for a stroll.”

  “Don’t go too far.”

  “Coming?”

  “Mick will look after you,” the Security man said. “I’ll stay and look after the old gent.”

  Banister moved off, lighting a cigarette. The second Security man joined him, and they strolled down the drive towards the road. Across the road, they could look down upon Adelaide, with its myriad of lights and the beauty that night laid upon it.

  They were looking when they heard the roar, from behind them. With it came a blinding flash, and next moment blast carried them off their feet. Banister felt himself thrown between the trees and towards the steeply sloping hillside – as fire leapt up, behind
him.

  Chapter 6

  Banister struck a tree, which broke his fall. He was hardly conscious of what he was doing, but lay still. He saw flames and the sky about them seemed ablaze. Particles of smouldering, burning wreckage had fallen among the trees, already a dozen little fires were leaping up about the grass.

  He staggered to his feet, and moved towards the sound. The Security man lay on his back, unconscious, with his right leg twisted beneath him. Banister lifted him, awkwardly; he was heavy, bulky. There was all the light Banister needed, for the wooden house was a mass of wild, surging flames. Fires were getting a hold among the trees, too.

  A different white light showed – headlights, some distance off. They might be those of a car driven by someone who lived near here or was passing through, but – trust no one. He left the Security man by the side of the road, and backed among the trees. One, with a misshapen trunk, gave him shelter – but there wasn’t much shelter anywhere.

  The light spread a lurid glow.

  There was a crackling sound as the fire spread through the grass; he saw it leaping up trees, festooning the branches. He felt the increasing warmth as it came nearer.

  The headlights drew nearer, too, swaying up and down. Then another car appeared, and another.

  The first drew up, Banister saw a man and a woman in it. The man jumped out and hurried towards the figure huddled up in the road. Banister heard him call: “You drive on and telephone the police, Mary!”

  They probably lived nearby, there was nothing to fear – yet there was always something to fear. From this moment on, it would be worse, Banister would be the only target. He might be safe from the casual touching hand, from fatalis itself, but he could never be sure that a bullet wouldn’t come out of the blue and kill him. He could not cross a road and be sure that he would reach the other side without being crushed to death. Now, he could not go to sleep and feel sure that he would wake – if “they” could blow up this house, they could blow up others.