The Man Who Stayed Alive

by John Creasey

  But he had a lot to do in New York, and had to find a hide-out.

  There was a break in his thoughts. He peered out at the signs on the lamp-posts at the street corners and saw 77th Street sign. Eight streets on, eight blocks on, and one or two west, and he would be at the apartment of Mrs. Gann’s sister, Riverside Drive at 85th Street. In the present darkness he had some security, the real heat wouldn’t be on until the morning.

  The next bus-stop would be nearest 85th Street.

  He got off.

  The street was wider than most, this seemed some kind of a traffic junction. Cars were streaming both in and out of the city which never slept. There were more lights, more open shops, more people walking. Windows everywhere were open and people sat at most of them. Men walked in their shirt sleeves, women in flimsy dresses, all seeking the illusory coolness of the night.

  He turned off Broadway without hurrying.

  No sirens screamed.

  It wasn’t until he reached Riverside Drive with its tall grey houses and its gardens between the houses and the Parkway, that he felt that he was breathing normally. He had a sense of exhilaration, too, the feeling that came when the breaks went his way.

  He looked for the apartment.

  It didn’t occur to him that he could throw his hand in, give himself up, be sure of a clearance from Scotland Yard. The sense of excitement as he reached the house and went inside increased.

  Deep down, he knew that it was because he might see Mrs. Gann again; — now.

  CHAPTER XI

  NEWS OF PIRRAN

  A woman opened the door. It wasn’t Mrs. Gann, but obviously she was related. There was the same corn-coloured hair, the same clear skin, the same kind of figure: Mrs. Gann in miniature. She stood with her body outlined against the light, and it seemed almost strange to Whittaker to know that here was a woman not only without fear, but apparently without cause of it.

  ‘Can I help you?’ she asked.

  ‘I hope you can,’ Whittaker said. ‘Is Mrs. Gann here ?’

  ‘Eve?’ the woman said, as if startled. ‘She’s not here right now, but I’m expecting her. Won’t you come in?’

  ‘Thank you,’ Whittaker said; ‘I’ll be glad to.’

  Eve.

  It was a fact that Bob Gann had never talked of her as Eve; often of his wife, of ‘her’ and ‘she’, but never simply Eye. Whittaker found the two names running through his mind: Eve Gann.

  He walked in, and the door closed firmly.

  ‘When do you expect her?’ he asked.

  ‘I thought maybe you were Eve,’ the sister said, and looked up at him thoughtfully. Something in her expression told Whittaker that she recognised him; a swift spasm of what might well be alarm showed in eyes which were grey but not dawn-grey like . . . Eve’s.

  She led the way into a large living-room, which was as cool as a room could be. The curtains were drawn. Colours splashed the walls and the furniture, bright yet toning in. The room gave an impression both of comfort and modernity, it had a lived-in look. By the side of an armchair was a small table, with a glass half-filled with coca-cola, a glass ashtray, cigarettes, and a book of matches. On the chair itself a book was open, somewhere in the middle. Folded on another table close to hand was a newspaper, and looking up from the newspaper was a picture of — Whittaker himself.

  His heart began to beat faster.

  ‘Won’t you sit down?’ Eve’s sister asked, and added: ‘I ought to introduce myself. I’m Eve’s sister, Rachel Defoe.’

  There was the photograph; but he couldn’t make up his mind, at once, what to call himself. Anything except Whittaker or White. She would guess that whatever name he gave was false, but no law compelled her to recognise a man from a photograph, and if he called himself Gibson, say, she would at least have an excuse for doing nothing about it, whereas if he called himself Whittaker . . .

  ‘I’m a friend of Bob,’ he said.

  ‘I think I’ve heard of you,’ Rachel Defoe said; she didn’t exactly smile; just looked as if she would like to. ‘Won’t you have a drink?’

  ‘A coke would be just fine.’

  ‘Oh, have some beer,’ she said. ‘I always keep a can in the ice-box.’»

  ‘Thanks,’ he said, ‘I’ll settle for beer.’

  ‘Why don’t you sit down?’ she invited. ‘I’ll get it.’

  She smiled this time, and went out of the room, across the small hall, into a room which he had just noticed. He had also noticed that there was a telephone in here; there might be in the other rooms, there was probably one in the bedroom of this apartment; it wasn’t a cheap place. He watched the open door. He listened for furtive movements, the stealthy opening of a door, the lifting of a telephone, the sometimes almost inaudible ting! of sound as it was lifted. He heard nothing like that, and nothing furtive at all; there were sharper sounds, followed by her footsteps. Rachel Defoe brought in a glass and a can of beer — opened, so that he could pour it. She put this on a small table by the side of his chair, with a glass mat beneath it.

  “Thank you.’ He took out cigarettes.

  ‘It was bad about Bob,’ she said, very quietly.

  ‘It was very bad.’

  ‘Eve told me,’ Rachel Defoe said, and hesitated, and then added more briskly, ‘everything, I guess. We’re sisters who get on well. Shall I tell you something?’

  He waited.

  ‘This will twist Eve right up,’ she told him. ‘It will be more than hell for her.’

  ‘I think you’re right.’

  ‘I got that impression,’ Whittaker said. ‘Where is she, now?’

  ‘She’s been aboard the Queen B., and with the police department part of the afternoon. I don’t know where she is, right now. I hope she won’t be long.’ Rachel Defoe looked up at a small electric clock built into the wall, and at the same time stretched out for a cigarette. As she lit it, she gave Whittaker the impression that she was fighting her nerves, and he wondered if that were simply because he was here. She had seemed so free from fear.

  ‘I’m beginning to get worried about Eve,’ she said suddenly. ‘She was to be back at nine o’clock.’

  Now, it was half-past eleven.

  Whittaker said slowly, worriedly, ‘Wouldn’t she call you if she expected to be late?’

  ‘I’d certainly expect her to call me.’

  ‘Can’t you guess where she is?’

  Rachel Defoe said: ‘I can guess that she is out looking for the man who killed Bob — for the man who began all this. There’s talk that Bob and that woman Gregson were killed by the same man, by the man Camponi who was found with a broken neck.’ Her gaze was very straight. ‘It’s just talk,’ Rachel went on. ‘Even if he were the killer, Camponi was only a legman.’

  ‘Could anyone be sure?’

  ‘It’s reasonable,’ said Rachel Defoe, and glanced at the clock again.

  They sat in silence.

  ‘If we knew where to start looking,’ Whittaker said, ‘we could start looking. You could also ask the police if they know where she is.’

  ‘Eve wouldn’t like that.’

  ‘They’ve killed several times, and they could kill again.’

  He shivered, inwardly.

  The thought of Eve Gann dead was sufficient reason to cause that. He believed that he could see that the same kind of fear was in this woman, too. When he had come, there had been a kind of peace, but that had gone.

  ‘I could call the police,’ she said, ‘but if I do that, then they’ll know where to find’ — she broke off for a long moment, and then added deliberately — ‘Eve.’

  ‘Doesn’t she want that?’

  ‘She said she half expected a friend,’ Rachel Defoe told him, and then added sharply: ‘You know who she half expected. She wouldn’t want anyone else to be here waiting for him.’

  Whittaker sat in silence, which lasted for a minute or two, but which seemed to last for hours. Then he said mildly:

  ‘Will you call the police abo
ut Eve, at once?’

  He saw the woman’s expression soften, knew that she would think along the same lines as Eve. Two sisters, worthy of being sisters, from magnificent stock. She actually smiled.

  ‘I needn’t tell them who it is calling,’ she said slowly. ‘I can just ask them to look for Eve. I wouldn’t care so much if that man hadn’t telephoned.’

  Whittaker went very still.

  ‘What man? And when?’

  ‘I don’t know who, and he called not long before you came.’ ,

  ‘What did he want?’

  ‘He asked for Eve.’ Rachel was sitting very straight in her chair and watching Whittaker intently. ‘He just asked for her, and when I said she wasn’t at home he hung up.’

  ‘No name?’

  ‘No.’

  Whittaker said, ‘What window overlooks the street, Mrs. Defoe?’

  ‘This one,’ she said. ‘And I’m not married.’ She got up and went to the window, and he followed her quickly and stopped her from touching the curtains.

  ‘Put out the main light, then keep to one side, please,’ he said, and she obeyed. He stood flat against the wall on the other side of the window, and gradually pulled the curtains aside. There was just the faint light from the reading lamp by her chair. He could hear her breathing. He opened the curtains wide enough to look out, and was quite sure that he could not be seen.

  » He could see the sidewalk across the road, the trees in the riverside gardens, the parked cars. Two cars were moving slowly, their lights glowing. Another came from the opposite direction, its headlights on. From here, they didn’t look very bright, but they cast shadows — of other cars, of lamp-posts, of trees and bushes.

  They cast the shadow of a man who stood by a tree nearly opposite the apartment building.

  Whittaker said briskly: ‘I’m going downstairs. Watch from here, and if Eve comes before you see me down there, open the window and shout.’

  ‘All — right,’ Rachel Defoe said, ‘I’ll do that.’

  Whittaker turned away. He didn’t want to scare her too much, and yet he felt badly scared. The watching man was watching here. Coincidence just wouldn’t stretch that far. The man had seen Whittaker enter, and if he were a friend of Ricky and Blick, he almost certainly knew what Whittaker looked like; yet he had allowed him to come.

  What drew this Ricky towards the Ganns?

  Whittaker didn’t force the questions, but went out quietly, carefully, making sure that the flat wasn’t watched from up here. He went down one flight of stairs, for the same reason, then called the elevator. It came purring up. In a few seconds, he was stepping into the hall. The light was bright, and the watching man couldn’t fail to see him. He went out briskly, swinging his arms and bending his body, so that he wouldn’t look tall. He crossed the road diagonally, away from the watcher, and was sure that Rachel could see him; so her swift fears should be quietened.

  He walked a hundred yards along the street, towards the first corner, then turned into the silent gardens. There were tarred paths, there were the bushes and the trees, and there was grass; dried and yellow and crisp underfoot. More cars passed, but none of them with their headlights.

  A cab turned the corner, a yellow beetle with its engine snarling. It slowed down. It stopped outside the apartment house, and someone got out. Whittaker could see above the roof of the cab; the passenger was a woman, and he felt quite sure that it was Eve.

  He moved, very swiftly.

  He reached the spot where the watcher had been as the driver started his engine and the car moved off. He saw the man, now away from the cover of the tree, and watching Eve. She walked into the building. The outer doors were open, and didn’t swing to.

  The watcher’s right arm was raised.

  ‘Want something?’ whispered Whittaker.

  The man swung round, smack into his clenched fist. The crack must have sounded as far as Eve, but she was through the inner doors, which were swinging to behind her. The man hit the ground with the land of thump which Blick had made; everything in his body must have been mixed right up. His gun slithered along the ground and came to rest in the kerb; it didn’t go off.

  Whittaker picked it up, making two he’d got, both with silencers.

  He picked the man up, too; one small, lean man, whose limbs and muscles were slack, and who still didn’t know what had hit him. Whittaker hoisted him to his shoulder and carried him into the shadows of the trees. Except for distant traffic, it was very quiet. Lights shone from some of the windows, but none from the window of Rachel Defoe’s apartment. There were street lamps, too, and across the Hudson the lights of New Jersey. A ship moved sluggishly downstream. A bunch of cars, ten or twelve of them, snorted along the parkway, as if they were in a desperate hurry to outpace each other; when they passed and it was quiet, Whittaker could see the lights on the George Washington Bridge, looking as if they were suspended high in the night sky.

  He put the man down, flat on his back, and in the dim light here, saw him move. He waited two minutes, and then said:

  ‘You’re going to talk, and you’re not going to waste time. Who sent you after Mrs. Gann?’

  The man’s breathing had the gustiness of a spring storm; he couldn’t get the breath in or out quickly enough. He was quivering, too.

  Whittaker gripped his right wrist; a man with powerful fingers can do a lot with a twist or two. He twisted. The man’s whole body flinched, and the breathing grew louder, more gusty.

  ‘It was Ri. . .’ he began, and then added with a gasp, ‘It was Ricky!’ he breathed.

  “Where can I find Ricky?’

  The man babbled: ‘Ricky’s the boss! He sent me——’

  ‘Where can I find him?’ Whittaker’s grip tightened savagely.

  ‘I don’t know, I . . . don’t do that, you’re breaking my arm! Don’t do that!’

  ‘ Where can I find Ricky ?’

  The man was writhing.

  ‘You know I can’t tell you that! If I were to tell you, I guess — don’t do that!’

  ‘Just tell me where to find Ricky.’ -

  ‘He’ll kill me!’ the man sobbed. ‘He’ll kill me! He’s at the Waldorf, with a pal, he——’

  ‘What pal?’

  ‘He’s with a guy named Pirran,’ the man said, and the sobbing note was still in his voice. ‘He’s with Pirran at the Waldorf.’

  Whittaker didn’t speak, didn’t move, except to relax his grip. This Ricky, and Pirran, were together at the Waldorf-Astoria. Pirran, who should have been dead, was alive. And Ricky . . .

  Whittaker ought to have been ready, but wasn’t.

  The man kicked at him savagely; the toe of his shoe caught Whittaker under the jaw and rocked him backwards. While he was falling, the man leapt to his feet, turned and darted off, away from the apartment house and away from the danger.

  CHAPTER XII

  BRIEF SANCTUARY

  ‘Do you know why they should want to kill you?’ Whit-taker asked.

  He stood in front of Eve Gann.

  In the kitchen, behind him, Rachel was moving about, making subdued sounds. Everything else was subdued when Whittaker was alone with Eve. He scanned her face — every feature; every line; the fine colouring of her lips, her skin, her hair, her eyes. He was aware of that oneness between them, yet at the same time it was edged with wariness — almost with suspicion. The question seemed to carry with it the seeds of disaster; implied that she did know why this Ricky should want to kill her. Beyond that was another question: that she might know why Bob had been killed, that none of this was as simple as it appeared to be.

  Her gaze was as steady as his.

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘I can’t imagine.’

  ‘First Bob, then you.’

  ‘I know.’ She didn’t smile, but there was an easing of the darkness of her gaze. ‘And you, in between.’

  Whittaker relaxed.

  ‘Yes,’ he agreed, ‘they tried to get me.’

  He touched his swolle
n jaw, and winced, turned away from her, and was glad to sit down. If there was a thing he didn’t like to admit, it was that he was tired.

  He was, though, and knew that it wasn’t all due to the heat.

  ‘You should have something on your face,’ Eve said. ‘You’d better come with me. Rachel will be some while making those sandwiches.’ She waited for him to get up. Getting up was an effort. He followed her into a bathroom which shimmered with sea-green tiles and chromium, and first bathed his chin where the man had kicked him, then put on a salve. It felt easier. He knew the contentment of being ministered to . . . by her.

  They went back into the living-room, to find that Rachel had brought in ham-and-turkey sandwiches, blueberry pie, cheesecake and coffee. It was all set on a low round table in the living-room.

  “Now come and get it,’ she said.

  She was as calm as Eve, and as calm as Whittaker, but it wasn’t quite genuine; it was something imposed on a turmoil of uncertainty, and of fear. He had been wrong in thinking that Rachel knew no fear; it burned as deep in her as in her sister.

  Eve was dressed as she had been when she had driven him from Scarsdale that morning, in a dark blue linen which sheathed her; the trimmings of white fell softly against her skin. She looked tired, also; as if her eyes would close the moment she eased off the pressure she was exerting on herself.

  It was half an hour since the man had run away.

  Whittaker said, ‘Thanks very much,’ and took a sandwich and started to eat as if he hadn’t eaten for weeks. He felt a kind of lethargy, but knew that he had to fight it off — or someone would fight it off for him. ‘Eve, there’s one thing to remember.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘They’ve failed once with you, but they’ll probably try again.’

  ‘Yes,’ she agreed.

  ‘Is there a place where you could go, and where they couldn’t find you?’