Death in Kashmir by M. M. Kaye Read Free Book Online Page A

don’t put anything in writing because letters can go astray or be stolen and cyphers can be decoded. But it also seems,’ she finished crisply, ‘that agents can be killed!’
    â€˜Yes,’ said Janet Rushton slowly. ‘Agents can be killed. That was why I didn’t believe you when you came to my door tonight. I thought it was a trap. That you had come to kill me.’
    â€˜You what! ’
    â€˜Why not? If anyone had told you a few hours ago that I was a Secret Service agent, would you have believed them?’
    â€˜Well…’
    â€˜Of course you wouldn’t! Because I don’t look like your idea of a Secret Service agent.’
    â€˜Yes, I suppose so. I see. No wonder you pulled a gun on me! I thought you must have gone mad; or else I had.’
    â€˜I know,’ said Janet wearily. ‘I realized that if you weren’t one of— them —then I would have done something that was going to be appallingly difficult to explain away. But I had to do it, because the other risk was so much greater.’
    â€˜How do you mean? What other risk?’
    â€˜If you had been one of them and I had hesitated for fear you might not be, I should have had no second chance. It was better to risk letting myself in for a lot of awkward questions and complicated lying than to risk that. You see, it’s not just my own life that’s at stake. It’s far more important than that. Now that Mrs Matthews is dead I’m the only person who knows what she knew. I was never any more than a sort of second string to her. She gave me all my orders. But now I’m on my own and I’ve got to keep alive. I’ve got to! I can’t let her down. I can’t let it all be lost.’
    The tired, passionate voice cracked queerly on the last word and after a moment Sarah said curiously: ‘What made you decide that I was on the level?’
    Janet Rushton smiled wanly. ‘Oh, partly intuition I suppose, but mostly simple arithmetic.’
    â€˜I don’t understand.’
    â€˜Don’t you? It’s very easy. You hadn’t any weapon on you and you had told me the truth—there had been someone at the window: someone who must have been there quite a while, for they had made a very neat job of filing through that catch. Well, if you weren’t on the level you wouldn’t have warned me.’
    â€˜Oh I don’t know,’ said Sarah with a smile. ‘I might have planted him there as a sort of decoy duck.’
    â€˜Yes. I thought of that too. You learn to think of most things in this job. But that didn’t add up either. If you had planted someone at that window you could only have done it to provide an alibi: an excuse for getting in or for getting me out, supposing I had refused to open the door to you. Your reasoning could have been that before letting you in I might run to the bathroom window and check up on whether you were speaking the truth, and then, convinced of your bona fides by a sight of the decoy duck, I would of course have opened the door.’
    â€˜Then what makes you think—’ began Sarah.
    â€˜I didn’t go to the window first,’ interrupted Janet. ‘I made certain instead that you had no weapon on you; and by the time I got to the window, whoever had been there had heard us and gone. It did occur to me then that possibly it was a plot: not to kill me, but to gain my confidence. But if it had been that, then it was an entirely pointless gilding of the lily for your decoy to take on a long, cold and exceedingly tricky job on my window merely to provide an alibi, when the briefest demonstration would have served the same purpose equally well.’
    â€˜I see,’ said Sarah slowly; and shivered. ‘You seem to have it all worked out. And—just for the record of course—I am on the level, you know.’
    â€˜I know,’ said Janet, with an odd inflexion in her voice. She raised her