The Bat that Flits Read online

  Then, to avoid the stag-at-bay kind of melodrama, I deliberately eased up.

  “Just dropped in for a quiet chat,” I began, thrusting my hand in my pocket because I felt a bit self-conscious about the handcuffs.

  But it was Gillett who had the stag-at-bay look, not me. Evidently my sudden entry must have upset him more than I had realised. You could practically hear the hounds baying all round him.

  “What the . . . ” he began, and then broke off.

  He got up, and began backing away from me. Rather a poor show, I thought. But, as there was an audience of only one and as he could deny afterwards that it had ever happened that way, I supposed it didn’t really matter. And he was rapidly putting on his act again.

  “I suppose this place is surrounded?” he asked quite calmly.

  “Afraid so,” I said.

  “Are they covering us?”

  “Just about,” I answered.

  For my part, I was determined to keep the conversation light and airy. Otherwise, in his present state, Gillett still looked as though he might start yelling out for help. And that was the last thing I wanted.

  “Had the pleasure of a long talk with Wilton to-day,” I went on. “We discussed quite a lot of things, and finally we got round to you. That’s why I’m here. . . . ”

  But that was as far as I got. For Gillett suddenly took over.

  “So I was right,” he said.

  “I don’t doubt it.”

  But Gillett wasn’t listening. Simply wasn’t hearing me. He was staring in front of him—at the table, I think it must have been. And because even a ski-stick might be quite a useful instrument if you start swiping about with it, I picked it up first.

  Gillett looked up.

  “You think you’re damn clever, don’t you?” he said.

  “Used to,” I admitted.

  “Well, I knew who you were the day you came.”

  “Pity you didn’t tell me,” I said. “I’ve often wondered.”

  Gillett ignored that.

  “Why didn’t you have your face lifted?” he asked.

  “I can’t help my scar,” I told him.

  “It nearly kept you out of the Party once,” he said.

  “Too conspicuous.”

  I raised my eyebrows. That was because I had suddenly become suspicious even of my best hunches.

  “Was that why you left that first note for me on my pillow?” I asked.

  Gillett seemed to be wondering whether to reply or not. “I thought you might still be one of us,” he said at last. “I might have been,” I told him.

  “Then I guessed you were in with the police. You and Wilton spent too much time together. Not very subtle about it, were you?”

  “It worked.”

  “You dirty traitor,” Gillett said.

  He was moving up in the direction of the bookcase while he was speaking. But he still seemed quite willing to go on talking.

  “And then you sent all those other messages just to get me foxed up?” I asked.

  Gillett nodded.

  “That worked, too,” I said.

  There was a pause.

  “All one typing?” I asked.

  Again Gillett nodded.

  “And all intended for me?”

  Gillett was leaning up against the bookcase by now.

  “No,” he said. “They were intended for Mann originally. I knew he was a Party member, too. I thought that was why he’d come here.”

  “So you did a sort of switch over?”

  This time Gillett just nodded again.

  “And you planted all the stuff on Mann?”

  “I wanted Wilton to find it.”

  “Was it Mann’s revolver?”

  “Mann never had a revolver. It was my spare one. I put the case in the basket, and the revolver in his drawer. I guessed he’d know what to do with it.”

  “You guessed right . . . ” I began.

  But the note of bitterness was all wrong. I didn’t want to risk offending Gillett. Not yet, at least. There was still too much to learn. So from there on I kept everything deliberately light and casual.

  “Oh, by the way, about that pass of mine,” I went on. “It was you who pinched it, wasn’t it?”

  Gillet nodded.

  “Nearly came in very useful,” he said. “Got someone else in the Party to use it. With average luck all this trouble could have been avoided.”

  “Just what I was thinking,” I told him. I was rocking up and down on my heels by now to show how much at ease I was. And I tried one line purely at random.

  “Why did you break with Hilda?” I asked.

  I was quite prepared for Gillett to go all silent and clamlike. But apparently he had put his inhibitions behind him.

  “Because I didn’t trust her,” he replied. “She belonged to the opposite side.”

  “And is that why you tried to kill Una?”

  Gillett frowned. It could have been either because he had tried, or because he had failed. With his sort of profile you couldn’t tell.

  “Found she’d been rifling my personal belongings,” was all he said. “Too inquisitive.”

  “Not surprised,” I told him. “You had us all guessing when you said you’d been fired at.”

  For a moment there was just a flicker of a smile on his face. It was an amused, superior sort of smile.

  “Exactly what I intended,” he replied.

  We were getting along famously by now. So I led up quietly to the closing line.

  “Well,” I said, “better hand over the culture, and we’ll call it quits.”

  Gillett suddenly reached his hand out to the bookcase beside him. But I had to take the risk on that.

  “Not there,” I said. “Una gave it to me. Then Bansted borrowed it. I think it’s in the Black Museum by now.”

  Gillett smiled. It was one of the nicest, and most genuine smiles I’d ever seen on him.

  “You bloody fool,” he said.

  As he said it, he pushed aside a copy of Simpson’s Morphology and made a grab at something on the bookshelf. It was a revolver. A nice new one, too, from the look of it. I had the feeling that it had been bought specially for me.

  “Did you think I was going to tell you everything, and let you get out of here alive?” he asked.

  “Seemed like it,” I replied.

  And, as I said the words, I slung the ski-stick hard at him. It wasn’t a bad shot. Another six inches to the right, and it would have got him full between the eyes. As it was, he side-stepped it. But it was the best I could do. A ski-stick was never made for in-fighting.

  What’s more, this particular one apparently hadn’t even been made for ski-ing. It wouldn’t have stood up to the strain of it. Because even the quite mild battering that I’d given it had knocked the end clean off. The guard came away completely, and a little metal capsule rolled out. It was the ink cylinder of a ball-point. Just like the one in which little Dr. Mann had stowed away his penicillin.

  “So that’s how you were going to get the culture out of the country, is it?”

  Gillett looked down for a moment.

  “Don’t bother now,” I said, “I’ll pick it up for you later.”

  But this time Gillett shook his head.

  “This is where I’m going to kill you,” he said quietly.

  It certainly looked as though we’d reached that point. And I couldn’t think how to string things out much longer. But I had a queer feeling all the time that even postponing matters by a few seconds might make the answer come out different.

  “Do you mind counting up to three before you pull the trigger?” I asked. “It’s the bang I can’t stand.”

  “You won’t hear it,” Gillett answered.

  I shrugged my shoulders.

  “I’ve given up being sure about anything.” Gillett squared himself.

  “One!”

  “One what?”

  But it was no use. I didn’t seem able to distract him now. “Two!�
�

  I closed my eyes and waited. I was feeling rather swimmy by now.

  “Thr . . . ”

  The report when it came sounded simply terrific. My whole head jerked back, and seemed to burst open from the concussion. It wasn’t immediately that I even realised that the report had come from the wrong place. It had come from the window instead of from the direction of the bookcase where Gillett had been standing. And already a pale, tobacco-stained hand was drawing the curtains back. It was Wilton’s hand. His left one. That was because he still had the revolver in his right.

  “I told you it was either you or Gillett,” he said.

  “Then why the hell didn’t you arrest both of us?”

  My patience with Wilton had worn a bit thin by now, and I felt another attack of bloody-mindedness coming.

  Wilton finally managed to get his long legs over the window-sill. Then he crossed over and looked down at Gillett. But there was nothing to be done there. At that range even I couldn’t have missed.

  “I wanted to see if he’d get careless once you were removed,” he said.

  There was a pause. A full-length Wilton pause.

  “He did,” he added.

  I picked up the capsule, and handed it to Wilton.

  “Well, that’s about the end of it,” I said.

  “Not entirely,” Wilton answered, without even remembering to say thank you.

  “Meaning what?”

  “Somebody’s got to tell Una,” Wilton remarked quietly.

  I smoothed my hair down, and straightened up my collar.

  “Not me,” I said. “Not after this. The Old Man had better break it to her. Or you can. Anyone but me.”

  “Come better from you,” Wilton answered.

  I caught his eye as he said it. In a half-light it was quite an understanding sort of eye.

  “Perhaps you’re right,” I told him.

  And as I went towards the door Wilton stood back to let me pass.

  To

  Bice and James

  This electronic edition published in 2011 by Bloomsbury Reader

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  Copyright © Norman Collins

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  ISBN: 9781448201174

  eISBN: 9781448202492

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