1951 - In a Vain Shadow

by James Hadley Chase

  ‘It didn’t need much fixing. He said he was going and I let him persuade me. I told him I couldn’t take the risk of any kind of strain in my condition. I said the best thing was for him to go over there, find a flat, and when everything was ready for me, to send for me. In the meantime I’d sell the house and furniture.’

  ‘And he fell for it?’

  ‘I’ve only to say the child might suffer, and he’d fall for anything.’

  ‘When’s he going?’

  ‘He talks about the end of the week.’

  We looked at each other.

  ‘We haven’t very long then. We’ll know in a day or so if the money’s here or in London. If he doesn’t go to London then it must be here.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘When are you going to do it, Frank?’

  ‘The moment I’m sure he has the money. Maybe we’ll have to wait until he’s packed and ready to leave the house.’

  ‘Suppose Emmie comes down to see him off?’

  ‘We’ll have to chance that. She can’t get down before ten in the morning. We’ll do it before she comes, and tell her he’s gone.’

  ‘I hope she doesn’t come.’

  ‘Yes.’

  There was a shock waiting for us when he and Emmie came into the dining room for lunch. One look at Emmie’s fat face told me she had talked him out of going.

  He had got a little of his colour back, and his hands were steady, and the hunted look had gone out of his eyes. I couldn’t imagine what she had said to him, but whatever it was. it had worked the trick.

  ‘I stay after all.’

  I couldn’t trust myself to speak, nor did I dare look at Rita.

  The silence that followed was heavy enough to sink a cruiser.

  ‘To give up everything just because some man is seen in the garden is ridiculous,’ Emmie said, sitting down. ‘It’s not as if Mr. Sarek isn’t being properly protected. Mitchell has said over and over again he can look after him, and if he can’t, then we must get someone who can.’

  ‘Is right. You can handle it, hey, Frank?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s not as if anything has happened,’ Emmie went on, speaking directly to Rita ‘I pointed out that to Mr. Sarek. Whoever’s behind this is bluffing. Mr. Sarek would be playing right into their hands if he left. I’m sure that’s what they want him to do.’

  ‘Is right. If they see I don’t go, they drop it.’

  Rita said coldly, ‘I wish you would make up your mind, Henry. You either stay or you don’t. I find this very unsettling.’

  ‘I stay.’

  After lunch they went back together into the sitting room.

  Sarek said they had more business to discuss. That left me alone with Rita.

  ‘It’s the gun or nothing now.’

  ‘I still don’t like it, Frank.’

  ‘I don’t give a damn whether you like it or not! I’m going to fix the gun now. As soon as it’s dark it goes off.’

  ‘Wait until she goes.’

  ‘No. I’m going to scare that fat bitch into a jelly. She’s been too smug all along; now she’s going to be convinced. She’s going to be right there when the gun goes off.’

  ‘We didn’t plan it that way.’

  ‘Never mind how we planned it. This is the way we’re going to do it now.’

  ‘You’re sure it’s safe? If anything happened…’

  ‘Oh, shut up!’

  They were still in the sitting room when the light began to fade, and the washed-out autumn sun went down behind a ridge of black clouds. I had gone out to fetch the car from the garage. Sarek had asked Rita to drive Emmie to the station.

  He wouldn’t let me go. He still wasn’t taking chances.

  As I left the house Rita went into the sitting room to tell them I was getting the car. Her job was to keep them talking, and away from the window until I got back.

  When I had parked the car in front of the house, I slipped into the barn and set the clockwork engine going. I timed it to start a minute or so after I had returned to the house. I was still boiling with rage, and it flashed through my mind that while I was about it, I might as well make a proper job of scaring those two. So I switched on the repeater: the way I had fixed it now, the whole of the magazine of the gun would be emptied into the room: seven slugs. If that didn’t shake Sarek out of his skin and give fat Emmie a heart attack, nothing would.

  I raced back to the house, paused outside the sitting room door, counting the seconds. I didn’t dare risk going in there until the first shot went off. I might walk into the slug. I could hear them talking. Rita was saying something about the railway timetable and the winter train service. I hoped she had got them away from the window.

  Then there was a bang! and the crash of breaking glass, followed by a wild scream from Emmie.

  I flung open the door.

  ‘Down on the floor - quick! I bawled.

  I had one brief glimpse of them, standing by the fire, Sarek and Emmie were clutching each other, then I snapped off the light. I went down on my hands and knees myself and began to crawl towards them.

  The gun went off again. The slug ripped through the top of the settee and ploughed into the floor. That wasn’t the way I had planned it but it was easy to guess what had happened.

  The recoil of the gun had jerked the gun loose from its fastening, and the barrel had dropped, so the gun now fired into the floor instead of the ceiling. I cursed myself for being too clever. If I had left it at one shot the effect would have been perfect.

  ‘Get down against the wall away from the window,’ I yelled above Emmie’s squeals, and scrambled wildly across the floor.

  They were all down on hands and knees now, crouching in a heap against the wall.

  The gun went off again; more glass fell out of the window; splinters flew from the coffee table. Sarek gave a high-pitched yap; the sound a dog makes when you tread on it, and began flopping about on the floor.

  ‘You fool!’ Rita suddenly screamed out of the darkness. ‘You stupid blasted fool!’

  She sounded mad with rage and fear, and I threw myself at her, sweating blood, knowing she had more to say.

  She said it: ‘I told you not to-’

  I reached her, my hand closed over her mouth and I shook her until her teeth rattled. She tried to bite my hand, but I dug my fingers into her cheek so she couldn’t move her jaw.

  The gun went off again, and the slug sang past our heads.

  She hit me in the chest, trying to get free. I knew she was ready to blow her top; I could feel the rage in her. If she got free I don’t know what she would say, so I shoved her backwards and slammed her head against the wall, stunning her.

  ‘He’s hit!’

  Emmie this time. She had suddenly stopped squealing.

  ‘He’s bleeding. Quick! Help me!’

  I could just make out her fat figure in the dim light of the fire. She was kneeling, her hands on something in the dark.

  ‘Get down!’ I shouted, wriggled over to her and shoved her flat.

  She hit out, her fingers hooked. She ripped a chunk out of my neck.

  ‘Let me go! He’s bleeding! He’s dying!’

  I was fit to walk up a wall now. If I had killed him, we were sunk. I had to stop that gun, and hide it. Nothing else mattered. There were three more shots to come. I rolled clear of her, plunged madly for the door as the gun went off again.

  Plaster fell on my head as I wrenched the door open.

  Emmie was still screaming for help as I stumbled into the hall and out into the garden. As I reached the barn door the gun went off again. The flash half blinded me. I charged in, groped with sweat-slippery hands, found the safety catch and pushed it on. Then, working like a madman, I unscrewed the bolt, got the thing of the wall, wrenched the gun free and hid the wooden shelf and the gadget in a pile of hay.

  The barn reeked of cordite. I stood for a moment, trying to catch my breath. I was cold and breathless with panic. Was he
dead?

  I went back to the house as fast as my buckling legs would take me.

  I stood in the doorway, looking into the room. Someone had turned on the light. Rita half lay, half sat against the wall, her face was grey-white and her eyes glazed. She still looked only half-conscious. Sarek lay in the middle of the room, his face a mask of blood. There was blood everywhere; on the carpet, the wall, the settee and all over Emmie.

  I went over to him. I was cold with fear that he was dead.

  I knelt beside him and touched his hand. Blood ran from a deep gash in the side of his face; pink bubbles formed at the end of his hooked nose. At least he was still breathing.

  Emmie was trying to stop the bleeding with a dirty handkerchief. I shoved her bloodstained hand away.

  ‘You’ll infect it with that filthy rag. Let him alone!’

  I was beginning to get control of myself. If he wasn’t hit anywhere else, then he wouldn’t die. I unbuttoned his coat and slid my hand inside his shirt. His chest felt emaciated and hairy under my hand. His heart was going like a clock.

  For a moment or so I knelt there, breathing heavily, sick with relief. He wasn’t going to die. The slug must have smashed through the coffee table and a wood splinter had caught him in the face. Sheer funk had made him faint.

  ‘Don’t touch him!’

  I got unsteadily to my feet and ran up the stairs to the bathroom. I was down again in seconds with bandages, a bowl of water and iodine.

  Emmie was sobbing now, hiding her fat face in her bloodstained hands. She looked like something out of the Grand Guignol.

  Rita had crawled over to Sarek and was staring at him, ‘Take it easy.’

  I caught hold of her, lifted her and put her on the settee.

  My nerves were sticking out a mile. I was scared yellow she would go off the deep end again in front of Emmie. But she didn’t. She looked at me, her eyes glittering with fear and rage, but she kept her mouth shut. That was all I cared about; she could be as furious as she liked so long as she didn’t start yelling.

  As I began to wash the blood of his face, he opened his eyes. We looked at each other. I tried a grin, but it didn’t come of. ‘Is that the way you handle them, Frank?’

  chapter fourteen

  Around six o’clock I couldn’t stand the atmosphere in the house a moment longer. So for something better to do I went out to the garage and drank half what was left in the bottle of Scotch.

  Sarek and Emmie were again together in the sitting room.

  Rita was somewhere upstairs. The tension in the house was as tight as a banjo string. I didn’t know which way the cat was going to jump, but at least, Emmie was now convinced someone was gunning for Sarek.

  As soon as I had stopped the bleeding and had bandaged the gash in his face and he had recovered sufficiently to speak, he said he wanted to talk to Emmie.

  I cleared out, muttering I would take a turn round the house to make sure no one was still lurking there. The three of them watched me go. Not one of them had a good thought for me. I knew that by the way they looked at me, and I didn’t give a damn.

  After I had walked around in the damp darkness for a while, I sneaked back into the house and tried to hear what Sarek was talking to Emmie about, but both of them had reduced whispering to a fine art, and I didn’t even hear a mutter.

  I hung around in the hall for half an hour or so, then I got fed up with waiting and went out to the garage for a drink. I was lighting a cigarette when I saw something moving towards me, ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘I hope you are proud of yourself.’

  ‘You can talk. You practically gave us away!’

  She came out of the darkness and moved into the light of the car’s side lamps I had turned on, ‘You fool! I told you not to use the gun. Now, look what you’ve done. You might have killed him.’

  ‘Well, I didn’t. Now, shut up about it. I scared them both, didn’t I? I bet he’s not going to stay now.’

  ‘He isn’t; He’s going on the ten o’clock plane.’

  ‘Tonight?’

  ‘Yes tonight.’

  She was breathing heavily, and I didn’t like the way she kept edging towards me.

  ‘That’s what we want, isn’t it?’

  ‘I could kill you!’

  The rage in her voice set my nerves jumping.

  ‘Take it easy. What’s the matter?’

  I moved away from her; into the darkness of the garage.

  ‘You would let that gun off when Emmie was there, you brainless, obstinate fool! Now she’s making all the arrangements. She’s telephoned the airport. That air hostess woman is expecting him.’

  That was her headache, not mine. But I could understand why she was in such a rage. If Miss Robinson knew he was leaving, there would be no chance of murdering him. I had forgotten Miss Robinson when I had made my plan. She could easily have been the spanner in the works.

  ‘Then we’ve had it. If she’s expecting him, she’ll see him on to the plane. We’re sunk.’

  ‘You don’t have to tell me that. And you’re the clever fool who’s done it!’

  ‘How was I to know?’

  She was still coming. I suddenly caught a glimpse of something that glittered in her hand.

  I grabbed at her wrist.

  ‘What the hell are you up to?’

  She went for me: her free hand was coming in gasps of rage. I grabbed her other wrist and slammed her against the wall. She spat in my face as she fought me. It was as much as I could do to hold her. I twisted her wrist until the knife fell on the ground and I kicked it away.

  ‘I’ll kill you, you smug, brainless ape!’

  I jerked her forward and banged her against the wall, hard, driving the breath out of her body.

  ‘Shut up or I’ll give you something to remember me by!’

  I felt her sag at the knees and I stepped away from her.

  ‘I did the best I could. It just didn’t work out. Now forget it. There’s not a thing we can do.’

  If he was really going for good he must have the diamonds and the money in the house.

  It seemed to me the shooting had worked out a lot better than I had at first thought. It had put a certain stop to murdering him, and it gave me the chance I had been waiting for. I had to be careful I could still make a slip, but at least I could be sure that when he walked out of the house whatever money he owned would be hidden in that coat, and I was going to get it if I had to hold him and Emmie and Rita up at the point of a gun.

  As I reached the house I heard a car drive up. It was the local taxi. Emmie came down the path, brushing past me, without looking at me, and got in. I watched the taxi back out, and then go grinding away down the lane in bottom gear. I wondered where she was going.

  I went into the house and pushed open the sitting room door. He was lying on the settee, a rug over him, his hands jumping and twitching under the rug like a couple of playful kittens.

  ‘I can’t say how sorry I am...’

  ‘Where’s the gun, Frank?’

  His voice was as shaky as his hands.

  I wondered if Emmie had had a suspicion of what actually had happened and had put him up to it. But I wasn’t so easily caught. I had cleaned and oiled the gun and reloaded it. I had done that the moment I got away from them. He was about an hour too late.

  I gave the gun to him.

  He must have been doubtful for he sniffed at the barrel, took out the clip and checked the cartridges. Then to my surprise, he dropped the gun into his pocket.

  ‘So you don’t even fire it, Frank?’

  ‘I know how you must feel, Mr. Sarek. But when I got out there he had gone.’

  ‘I might just as well have no bodyguard.’

  ‘I didn’t think they’d try to shoot you.’

  He didn’t say anything.

  ‘If you think it’s my fault...’

  ‘Never mind. Is no good making excuses. I give you twenty pounds: that squares us, hey?’

  �
��I don’t want it. I didn’t earn it. I feel pretty bad about this, Mr. Sarek.’

  He held out twenty one-pound notes.

  ‘Is what I owe you. I don’t need you anymore. Take it.’

  ‘I’m not taking it. I didn’t earn it, so to hell with it. I’m damned sorry you’re sore with me, Mr. Sarek. I know I talked big, but I didn’t expect them to take pot shots at you. No one could have prevented that.’

  I could tell by the way he began to relax that he liked the idea of keeping the twenty pounds, as I knew he would like it. ‘You better have it!

  ‘No.’

  He put the money into his pocket.

  ‘Well, you did go after him, I say that for you?’

  He looked like nothing I’ve seen on this earth, lying there before the fire. The only thing you could see of his face was one beady black eye. The rest of his face was hidden by bandages. At least I had made a good job of that.

  ‘I suppose, after this, you’re going, Mr. Sarek?’

  I took out my cigarette case and offered him one. He took it, had trouble in finding his mouth, but succeeded after lifting one of the bandage folds.

  ‘Yes; even Emmie want me to go now. She fix for me to catch the ten o’clock plane.’

  I sat opposite him.

  ‘Perhaps it would be safer to wait until daylight.’

  ‘I go tonight.’

  ‘I’ll go with you to the airport.’

  ‘Is all right. Mrs. Sarek drives the car.’

  That didn’t sound as if Emmie would be with them.

  ‘That’s a lonely drive. Anything could happen. I’ll sit at the back with the gun.’

  He hesitated.

  ‘You sit at the back, but I have the gun.’

  ‘Please yourself...’

  At least I was going with him.

  While Rita and he were upstairs packing, the telephone bell rang. I answered it.

  ‘Is Mr. Sarek there? This is Miss Robinson.’

  ‘He’s busy. Can I take a message?’

  ‘Would you tell him the ten o’clock plane is delayed? It won’t take off until ten twenty. I know he hates being kept waiting.’

  She was certainly trying to earn her last five-pound note.

  ‘I’ll tell him,’ and I hung up.