The Man Who Stayed Alive

by John Creasey

  She patted her handbag.

  He went off, still uneasy, and filled with that sense of false security.

  He knew that Eve doubted whether he would find his way back; there was so much that she didn’t know about him. He went direct to the car as if he could see a trail, opened the back and lifted Pirran out. Pirran was conscious, and he wriggled a little, still mouthing something but making no sound that mattered.

  They had taken the gag off, twice, to give him food and drink, and once Whittaker had walked with him for ten minutes. He walked now, limping badly.

  Eve’s figure, just a shadow, appeared from the back door.

  ‘All right?’

  ‘Yes.’-

  This time, when they went in, she locked the door and pulled the blinds, then switched on the kitchen light. Pirran blinked like an owl, and his mouth worked behind the gag.

  Whittaker untied the gag and saw the red marks on his lips, the ridges under his nose. He didn’t feel at all sorry for Pirran, for a man who should have been dead but was alive. He could sense the change in the little man; the quivering of terror that was in him. He carried him into the living-room and dumped him in a chair and seemed to forget him.

  Eve said, ‘What will you do next?’

  ‘When Pirran’s told us all he knows,’ said Whittaker, ‘we can decide what it’s best to do.’

  ‘How will you know if he’s telling the truth?’

  Whittaker turned to look at Pirran.

  ‘We’ll know,’ he said, and his gaze and his voice were as bard as the grip of his fingers could be. ‘We’ll know all right. Pirran has that packet. We’ll get it. But Pirran can wait.’ He stood up. ‘We can’t stir from the house tonight, Eve, so we aren’t in any hurry.’

  ‘Neil,’ she said.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Don’t throw time away. If Ricky comes after Pirran,

  then——’

  ‘Rickett can’t find us here,’ Whittaker argued. ‘No one followed us, no one knows where we are, no one saw us come here.’ He sounded much more sure than he felt. ‘It’s a long way from the nearest house. Remember when the man came here and started shooting? No one heard a sound. No one will hear any noise that’s made here. We ‘ needn’t worry about Rickett catching up with us — unless we want him to.’

  Eve didn’t speak.

  Whittaker said: ‘I wouldn’t object to overhearing Rickett and Pirran having a little chat, would you? We could fix it, if. . .’ He stopped, and grinned and rubbed his great hands together. He seemed to be talking as if Pirran was a thousand miles away, not listening to them with his frightened eyes darting to and fro, and his parched tongue trying to moisten his dry lips. ‘Rickett doesn’t trust Pirran. If we were to let him know that Pirran had talked——’

  Pirran squeaked, ‘No, no, no!’

  Whittaker turned to look at him.

  There was a film of sweat on Pirran’s wrinkled forehead, and on his lined upper lips. His mouth sagged and his chin drooped. His last vestige of courage seemed to have gone. There he was, like a damp expiring fish, and the only thing deep in him was fear. There were two fears; of what Whittaker might do to him and of what Rickett might do. The softening-up was as complete as it would ever be.

  Whittaker said: ‘I don’t know how tough he is. I may have to ask you to go out of the room.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Eve said, and didn’t even smile.

  She hadn’t put a foot wrong, hadn’t said a word out of place, from the moment of their meeting. She was a perfect foil, and Bob Gann must have found her so in his work as well as here at home. Bob Gann; the man who had died yesterday, which was a million years ago. Tall, handsome, dark-haired, vivid Bob Gann, whom Whittaker had liked so much, who had confided in him, and who was beginning to fade as memory always faded.

  It had been a long, long day; they had lived a lifetime in it.

  ‘Please,’ Pirran muttered brokenly, ‘please, I have told you all I can — everything. Don’t hurt me! Don’t hurt me!’

  Whittaker said briskly:

  ‘All right, Pirran, you can have another chance. But don’t forget what can happen if you throw it away. What was in the packet?’

  ‘I have told you,’ Pirran said and gulped. ‘Diamonds; a fortune in diamonds. They were from a famous dealer in Amsterdam, and Camponi stole them.’ He gulped again, ‘And I stole them from Camponi! That was why he attacked me, why I was in such danger. I needed help desperately. You and Gann. . . .’

  ‘You had the nerve to have an F.B.I. man protect you with a fortune in stolen jewels in your possession?’ Whit-taker demanded incredulously.

  It was so fantastic that surely no one could have invented such a story.

  Pirran said hoarsely: ‘Gann didn’t know. Camponi dared not tell him! I believed I was safe with you and Gann, but you know what followed. Maisie made that deal with me, and——’

  Whittaker broke in, ‘Did she drug you?’

  Pirran said: ‘I can’t be sure. I can’t be sure she didn’t double-cross me. But Camponi killed her, so . . .’ Pirran broke off; his lips worked his eyes became very bright. “Whittaker, if Maisie drugged me and stole the packet but didn’t tell him, no wonder he killed her!’ He moistened his lips, and muttered, ‘Please, a little water — a little water,’ he muttered.

  ‘I’ll get it,’ Eve said. She got up and was soon back with a glass of water. Pirran kept licking his lips in anticipation, yet when he drank he drooled. He was obviously a terrified and beaten man.

  Would he lie now — or keep anything back?

  ‘Thank you,’ he said; ‘thank you very much.’ He wiped his wrath with the back of his hand. ‘Whittaker, you can do what you like. You cannot get any more out of me, because that is all I can tell you. This story of Camponi’s? Perhaps he believed you and Gann knew where the real packet was; if he thought that I did, then he could believe that I had told you. But — I know nothing more.’

  He paused and looked at Whittaker from eyes which were not only colourless, but without any life or vitality at all.

  Whittaker said, ‘I don’t believe that Camponi or anyone else would kill because a man might know something dangerous.’

  Pirran shrugged helplessly, pathetically.

  ‘I can’t explain more,’ he said. ‘I cannot even guess. Whichever way I look, there’s trouble. You think I have the diamonds. So does Ricky. . . .’ . » He stopped.

  Eve didn’t speak, but Whittaker saw the way she looked at him when Pirran mentioned the diamonds this time. Before, she had been surprised and puzzled; now, she had had time to think, to realise that Whittaker had know about them, but hadn’t confided in her. Would this mar the strange idyll of their day?

  ‘There is nothing more,’ Pirran repeated with emphasis, born out of fear. ‘I know nothing more at all.’

  Eve got up and walked across the room, then sat down at the piano and stared at a photograph. Whittaker couldn’t see the face in the photograph, but he felt sure that if it were turned towards him he would see Bob Gann.

  He made himself say: ‘A man came to shoot Mrs. Gann. He said that Ricky sent him,’ There was a pause while he stared at Pirran. Then, ‘He was in your apartment at the hotel.’

  ‘So — is that my fault ?’ asked Pirran, and his arms flopped. ‘Didn’t I tell you, Ricky left him with me. I know he had been out on some other job. What job — how should I know?’ He looked blankly at Whittaker, and then showed a flicker of interest. His face perked up: a fish coming to life again. ‘What is that? He told you he came from Ricky?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘No man who came from Ricky would dare to name him,’ Pirran declared. ‘He worked for Ricky, I know about that, but if he named him he double-crossed him! Who would he be working for?’ That squeak came back into the man’s voice. ‘Can you tell me ?’

  Whittaker didn’t answer.

  ‘Who stole the packet? Was it Maisie ? Did she manage to get it from me or from Camponi? Did she substitute
the one that was empty for the one he had found ?’ Now, Pirran’s voice was shrill. ‘Did Maisie have it, and did she give it to the other girl, the quiet girl — what was her name — Olive? Yes, Olive Johns. That’s the one you want — not me! Does she know?’

  Could she!

  Whittaker found his heart racing at the thought.

  Blick had gone to see Olive Johns, so obviously Ricky had suspected her. She might have lied, might have fooled Whittaker, and still be sitting on that fortune.

  Whittaker called the Lamprey Hotel. Olive Johns was still in room 35.

  CHAPTER XVII

  ‘DON’T GO!’

  Eve stood a little way from the telephone, quite still, looking at Whittaker. Her head was raised. If she had been carved out of some rock which throbbed with the blood of woman, she could not have looked more beautiful. She did not say a word, and yet she called him. The depth of the tragedy was in her eyes, and yet there was a light too, and desperation. The dead were all around her, yet now it was clear that her concern was for the living.

  She knew what Whittaker would do.

  She knew, although they had not met until the dawning of the previous day, that he would go to the Lamprey Hotel, to find out what he could of Olive Johns.

  It was as Inevitable as night following day, and yet she could not have known it; could only have divined it as she saw Whittaker put down the receiver. He had not even said that Olive was still there.

  He found himself looking at Eve with tension in his eyes and body.

  Pirran was not with them now, but locked in a closet, in a lounge chair which gave him some comfort, communing’ with himself and his past sins and present fears. He might never have existed.

  ‘Neil,’ Eve said, ‘don’t go!’

  He didn’t answer.

  ‘They’ll be waiting for you,” she said. ‘They know that you’ll get round to her before long, and all they have to do is wait. That’s why they’re not here. That’s why they weren’t at Rachel’s apartment. Neil, I beg you not to go.’

  He could lie to her.

  In fact he knew that he could not lie successfully; he could not bring himself to lie — to try to cheat her. The truth lay between them, and it must always be like that.

  ‘I must go,’ he said quietly. ‘It is the only thing to do.’

  She drew a deep breath.

  She still seemed to be pleading with him silently, and to be calling him. The simple, the easy thing would be to step towards her and take her in his arms and — -forget. His heart beat with a fierce, challenging force. Take her, take her, take her seemed to be a refrain beating itself against his mind and against his lips. It could turn him mad. It could make him forget Bob Gann. It could make him forget that if he once moved towards her, once put his arms about her, he would forfeit not only all her respect, but any hope of her the future might hold. But he had to fight with himself. He had to remind himself that her anxiety was desperate because of her grief. Bob had died, and the fear that he would also die made her fight for his life. She had no chance to fight for Bob’s.

  ‘Eve, don’t you see,’ Whittaker made himself say, ‘I must go. If Olive——’

  ‘I can see,’ she said, and there was a throbbing note of bitterness in her voice. ‘Oh, I can see what you’re going to do. You’re going to do what Bob did — you’re going to kill yourself. Time and time and time again I told him, I warned him, that he must stop. A man can tempt death too often; Bob tempted it every day of his life, and why — why? Oh, he could find fine words. His duty, his job, his country, his conscience — any one or all of them would go before his wife and children. Did he owe nothing to them? He behaved as if they didn’t exist, when he was away from us. He was always looking for death, looking for a way of making us writhe with the agony of knowing he might never come back. What do you think happened to me when you told me he was dead? The thing I had been expecting for an age had happened, and I tell you that something in me died. What will happen to Mimi, when she knows ? To Bob ? Why,

  Bob worshipped him! To Bob, his father was——’

  She stopped, as if the words and the thoughts choked her; and still Whittaker did not move.

  Tears glistened in her eyes, as if they had been wrung from the very depth of her being. She stood less upright, and her hands moved a little, as if subconsciously she wanted to find something to touch, to hold on to.

  Whittaker did nothing to help her, felt as if he himself had been turned to stone. One false move, now, and all hopes would be in ruins.

  He must not touch her, for her body would send the fire raging through his veins.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Eve said huskily, brokenly. ‘I’m sorry I talked like that. But — why must you get yourself killed ? You only knew Bob for a few days. It’s not your country. It’s not your affair. You were to help to keep Pirran alive, and he’s alive and being looked after, isn’t he?’ The wryness of that made her lips twist, as if a smile were forcing itself through against everything she wanted to do. ‘Why don’t you stop looking? Why don’t you go back to England? Tell the police here the truth of it, and go while you’re alive.’

  ‘If I go,’ said Whittaker, ‘how shall I remember you?’

  ‘If you die how will you remember anyone?’ The tension was back, her moment of weakness gone. ‘Nothing need keep you here. You’ve made Pirran talk, you’ve found that Olive must be involved; in twenty-four hours or a little more you’ve done as you dared to hope. Why don’t you stop before it’s too late, before you’re slaughtered, too ?’

  ‘Eve,’ Whittaker said, ‘I must go.’

  She raised her hands again and looked at him for a long time; and then, with a catch in her voice, she turned away.

  He remembered the first time that he had seen her going up the stairs. The slow, stiff movements, only hinting at grace while talking of grief. He remembered how she had looked when he had told her what had happened to her husband. He could hear other sounds, as if the child Mimi were playing in the garden; as if it were daylight, not dark night.

  He watched her.

  She disappeared.

  This was the time when he should go. Out of the house, to the car, into Manhattan, along Broadway, into the Lamprey Hotel. He hadn’t started thinking about how he would get in there, yet, or what he wanted to do. Search the apartment? Try to force Olive to talk? From the time that she had screamed to the police he had been sure she wasn’t all she had seemed. . . .

  Never mind Olive; forget Olive. Think.

  Whittaker looked towards the empty landing. He heard no , movement above his head, although he saw a light go on. He wished she would come down. He longed for Eve to understand the compulsion which drove him.

  Of course, she did.

  She had understood with Bob, too, and hated it. She was right in believing that Bob had driven himself to his own death. There was a time when a man should stop, where one’s own life was more important than the shadowy things of living, the abstracts of duty. He knew what she had tried to say; what all the women of such men would always try to say. There came a moment when logic and reason vanished; when a man like him, like Bob, was driven under a driving compulsion which he simply couldn’t control. He found names and excuses for it, he could make up reasons, if he were called upon to speak to the multitudes gathered in the market place he could make himself out a hero, but — what was the truth?

  Wasn’t Eve right?

  She was upstairs, fighting her bitterness alone.

  He stayed down here, fighting the unseen forces, thinking now of Olive Johns, of Bob — with the back of his head a dreadful sight-of all the things that had happened and all the powers which were fighting each other. Pirran and Rickett, both evil men, using the powers of corruption to have their own way.

  And — the packet.

  Where was it?

  Were diamonds its only secret?

  Rickett wanted it, Pirran had wanted it, someone unknown had stolen it. Rickett was fighting for it,
and had believed Pirran when he had sworn that it had been taken from him. There was the man who had gone to Olive, to search, who had started searching, and whom he, Whittaker, had stop-stopped. He was in the hands of the police, now — what else could he have wanted but news of the packet?

  Suddenly he knew that he would have to go.

  He stood by the open door of the room upstairs. He heard no sound of movement; but for the light that streamed through, he would not have been sure that this was the room she had entered. He had come upstairs slowly, because he knew that he must go into New York, but first he had to tell Eve; he had to try to make her understand that it went deeper than any sense of duty, it was part of existence.

  He knew that he was confessing to weakness by going upstairs.

  He should have left her without another word.

  No, that was wrong, he shouldn’t leave her; he couldn’t go without giving her a chance to come with him. She might be in danger. There was no way of being sure that the house wasn’t being watched, the only certain thing was that no watchers had yet moved in.

  He called ‘Eve’ in a quiet voice.

  She didn’t answer.

  ‘Eve,’ he said.

  ‘Why don’t you go ?’ she asked in a slow voice, ‘Nothing I can say or do can make you stay.”

  ‘Eve, I want you to come with me, part of the way.’

  ‘I shall stay here.’

  ‘There might be danger here.’

  ‘Does that really matter?’ she asked bitterly. ‘Do you really care? Aren’t you saying that just to square your conscience, and in the hope that when you’re dead, I’ll remember that you pretended that you would like to help me?’

  ‘Eve,’ Whittaker said, and thrust the door open, ‘this is

  your fight as much as mine. Remember?’ He strode into the

  room, touched with an anger he hadn’t intended, which

  welled up out of nowhere. ‘You wanted to avenge Bob,

  you——’

  He stopped as if the words had been sliced from his lips with a knife.

  She was so very lovely, now, and tragedy was in her loveliness too.