The Refuge by Kenneth Mackenzie Read Free Book Online Page B

awake and expectant. A minute later he came himself, owl-eyed in the light, hitching his dressing-gown about his shoulders.
    ‘What’s trouble, Mr. Fitz?’ he said in a surprised voice.
    I told him, and explained that I wanted his master-key. I did not tell him Hubble had used my own duplicate and was already in the flat next to mine.
    ‘Don’t go to bed for a few minutes,’ I said. ‘There is a police detective with me who may want to ask you a few purely formal questions, as you are in charge here. It is for him I want the key.’
    Speechless, he took a ring of keys from somewhere behind the door, looked at them and pushed them about until he could isolate a particular one. I saw he was well awake by now; when he spoke at last, it was with his own peculiar intonation and emphasis which always put me in mind of some radio comedian I had once heard on a B.B.C. programme.
    ‘
That
one is
her
key,’ he said in his queer falsetto voice. ‘There
is
no
master
key, Mr. Fitz, but
that
one is
hers.
Or . . . should I
say—
er
—was
? Dear me. This is
indeed
a dreadful
thing,
and
you
and your
boy
and
her
such
friends.
Dear me, what a dreadful
thing.
I do
hope
, Mr. Fitz, it doesn’t get in the
papers
, I mean to
say,
the
flats
, you know—it’s the
letting
what I’m
thinking
of, Mr. Fitz. People don’t
like
it, goodness knows
why
, but they
don
’
t.
’
    ‘We’ll keep the address out of it, Alec,’ I said. ‘Just wait for a minute or two, and I’ll call down to you if Sergeant Hubble wants you.’
    ‘As you
say
, Mr. Fitz,’ he said rather doubtfully; and I left him there in the doorway with his pinched, precise face turned up as he watched me go with some anxiety, and began the climb up that so-familiar stairway to the third landing and—as I hoped—the beginning of the last act in this drama of my own devising, which would be almost at an end when I brought Alan home. It was a heavy and an interminable ascent, for while my will led me up and on with desperate determination, my whole body was in open rebellion now, and I had actually to resist a strong urge to sit down on the top step of the first flight and lean my forehead against the coldness of the pale-green wall. Only the knowledge that Hubble was in her flat, alone, drove me on without a pause. When I reached the landing I saw the lighted doorway, and saw his bulky shadow move slowly across the slab of light on the corridor carpet outside it. Without hesitation I went in to join him. One look about, as I entered the big room from the entrance lobby, assured me that all was as it should be. Hubble, very solid and serious in his heavy overcoat, stood still now in the middle of the deep-blue carpet. His regard met mine without suspicion, with—I thought—an expression of simple compassion at last.
    ‘There’s a note for you on the radio,’ he said. ‘I want you to tell me, for the sake of formality, if it’s her handwriting. If you have any letters of hers you’ve saved, you’d better show me one. Just formality, you know. The note about settles it, I think.’
    I took up the note with both hands. In these matters you cannot be too careful, particularly under the very eye of the police; and that folded sheet of paper, did he but know it, already had my finger-prints on it, as well as Irma’s. I did not enjoy this active deceiving of a man who had long been my good friend, but I had determined that it should be he, and no one else from his branch if possible, who would be with me at this moment, for now much depended upon his casual goodwill towards me. It must be understood that I was thinking throughout not of myself and my own safety, but of Alan. Once determined upon, once begun, the business must not be botched through any over-confidence of mine, for the boy’s whole well-being depended upon me now.
    Our friends, as well as those who love us much, are of course our easiest dupes. I had recently tasted this duplicity myself, and was as yet