Midnight Plus One - Lyall Gavin - Страница 42

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'Sergeant!' the General called. 'When did the car last break down?'

Morgan stiffened and started considering. 'We had the silencer trouble in 1956, sir. But that wasn't a real break-down. I think the last time was the electrical problem in – that would be in '48.'

I grinned. 'All right. Lunch up here?'

'Of course,' the General said.

The lunch arrived on the table at the other end of the room. Morgan took the trays at the door and handed round the food – presumably so that the waiters wouldn't set eyes on Maganhard. My first idea was that this would make them doubly suspicious, but then I remembered the General had been in this hotel over forty years. Forty years isn't enough to stop waiters being suspicious, of course, but it's time enough for them to learn to be forgetful when the police come asking questions.

We had troutau bleuand a straightforward veal escalope that was as soft as butter: the General obviously didn't belong to the overdone-roast-beef movement that most of Montreux's English guests insisted on. He went on with his glass of swizzled champagne, but the rest of us got a crisp cold Ayler Herrenberg.

It was a quiet meal, except for the General's eating. Maganhard was worried about the time factor, and annoyed that the right thing to do was just wait. Harvey was quiet and morose. He drank a glass of wine – no more – but he took it in three big gulps, and fiddled with his glass a lot, counting the seconds until he could take the next gulp.

Just before half past one, Morgan was pouring coffee. The General asked if we'd like a liqueur and I said No, fast, to pass the hint to Harvey. He gave me a twisted little smile and said No in his own time. No customers for liqueurs.

I tried to think of something to say to spin things out a bit – and to stop Maganhard and the General insulting each other and cocking up the whole deal.

Before I could think of anything, the General looked at Harvey and said: 'Understand you're a bodyguard. What d'you think of me collection?'

Harvey glanced back at the guns over the mantelpiece. 'Pretty expensive, I'd guess.'

'One of the best collections in the world. For its period. But' – and the old face dragged itself into the ghost of a smile – 'I thought perhaps you see another value in 'em.'

Harvey shrugged. 'As pistols, you'd be better off throwing rocks. As art, the trouble is they're pistols. Junk like that stopped gun development dead for two hundred years. And I don't suppose it helped art much, either.'

I said: 'Hold on. You could never get handcrafting like that on a gun these days.'

'Thank Christ for that. Or somebody, anyhow.' He jerked his head at the display. 'Take a real look at them: with all that carving the butts are lousy grips, and I'll bet most of them are muzzle-heavy. Sure, some of the cheaper stuff was better – duelling pistols had real grips and a good balance. But when the top men were doing this sort of stuff, the rest were trying to follow. So they spent two hundred years putting more engraving and gold wire on pistols. If they'd known their jobs they'd have learnt a bit of chemistry and invented percussion caps and cartridge loading two hundred years earlier.

'But they weren't interested: that was too damn practical. They wanted to be artists. Wanted to forget they were making pistols.' He stared across at the General. 'So they ended up making your stuff. It's an expensive sort of wallpaper – but the wall's where they belong.'

I'd been half expecting the General to burst into flames the moment Harvey gave him the chance. But all he did was nod very slowly and rasp: 'A refreshingly new point of view, young man. Why d'you hold it so strongly?'

Harvey shrugged and frowned and said slowly: 'Pistols are for killing people. Nothing else – there's no other point to them. Maybe I just don't like to see that wrapped up in ' fancy dress.'

The General chuckled softly and the damp eyes fixed on Harvey. 'If you get to my age – which I doubt, in your job -you'll know that everybody has to wrap it up somehow. You must have your own way, already.'

Harvey went very still.

I shunted myself to my feet. 'If we rehearse much longer, we'll start overplaying our parts. Let's get started.'

Morgan began helping people into their coats. The General sat where he was, and I stood where I was. The eyes swivelled to me. 'Well, Mr Cane,' he said quietly, 'was I right about Mr Lovell – the way he wraps it up? I saw him with his glass…'

'You were right.'

'Difficult, Mr Cane. Difficult.' The old head trembled on its stalk. 'And how do you do it?'

'Me? I go around believing I'm in the right.'

'Ah. You know – I'd say that was even more difficult. One so easily comes unwrapped.'

I nodded. 'And how do you do it, General?'

He sank carefully back in his seat and his eyes closed slowly. 'As Mr Lovell said: with gold wire and fancy engraving. I find it lasts.'

'I hope so, Brigadier.'

The hoods slid open. 'You noticed my little conceit, did you?'

'One rank up from Colonel is Brigadier-General – in your day. They dropped the "General" from it in the 'twenties some time.'

'True. But the "General" was still there when I got it, so…' the eyes closed again. 'It helps the wrapping.'

'Goodbye, General.'

'He didn't say anything. I nodded and picked up my jacket and raincoat and followed the rest out. Morgan led the way to the back lift. We went straight down to the basement garage.

The moment! saw the car I knew we were safe as far as the frontier. To forget a car like that, the cops would have to be a lot more stupid than even I was ready to believe. Apart from anything else, they must have had over thirty years to get to know this car.

It was a 1930 Rolls-Royce Phantom II 40-50 with a seven-seat limousine-de-ville body! I didn't know all those names and numbers right then: Morgan told me. All I could see then was something like the Simplon-Orient Express mated with a battleship and on four wheels. It was sharing the garage with a couple of modern Rolls, a new Mercedes 600, a Jaguar Mark 10, and a Cadillac. It made the whole bunch look like mere transportation.

It had one other little distinction: the damn thing looked as if it was made of engraved silver. In the dull basement light it glowed like next Christmas.

At second glance, I saw it was just aluminium: un-painted aluminium, milled in small circles so that it caught the light from every angle, and studded with lines of ground-down rivet heads. Five minutes before, I'd have said aluminium hadn't got quite that Rolls touch. I'd have been completely wrong. It had exactly the Rolls touch: it looked expensive, simple, and tough, the way the best fighter planes look, the way a good rifle looks, the way the first real space ship will look.

Beside me, Harvey said softly: 'Jesus.' Then he nodded at the rear door. 'I guess he was worried it didn't look individual enough.'

I hadn't noticed it before: a painted crest, about the size of a spread hand, on the door. At first I couldn't work it out, then it clicked. The green-and-white shield of Vaud canton, with the rose and laurel wreath of the Intelligence Corps painted on top – the 'rampant pansy resting on its laurels' as the rougher Departments of the Army used to call it. I grinned. It was the only fancy thing about the whole car; the General hadn't been able to resist wrapping it up a little.

Morgan stepped forward and swung open the door. By now he had a black, peaked cap on his head instead of the orange tweed accident. He looked the perfect chauffeur.

Maganhard and Miss Jarman climbed in – and I mean climbed. The bottom was high off the ground, and the top was high off the bottom: you couldn't see over it without standing on the running board.

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