‘Very good, sir.’ He wasn’t friendly any more. ‘I will let you know when there is any news.’
He went away on his spindly old legs as dignified as an archbishop conferring a favour, and left me alone in a room full of bad memories. About a yard from my left foot Souki’s head had bled on the rug. Over by the fireplace stood the telephone into which Dedrick had breathed hurriedly and unevenly while he talked to me. I turned to stare at the casement window through which the kidnappers had probably come, gun in hand.
A short, dapper figure in a white tropical suit and a panama hat stood in the doorway, watching me. I hadn’t heard him arrive. I wasn’t expecting him. With my mind full of murder and thugs, he gave me a start that nearly took me to the ceiling.
‘I didn’t mean to startle you,’ he said in a mild, rather absent-minded way. ‘I didn’t know you were in here.’
While he was speaking he came into the room and put his Panama hat on the table. I guessed he would be Franklin Marshland, and looked to see if Serena took after him. She didn’t. He had a small, beaky nose, a heavy chin, dreamy, forgetful woman eyes and a full, rather feminine mouth. His wrinkled face was sun-tanned, and the thick fringe of glossy white hair, above which was a bald, sun-tanned patch, made him look like a clean-shaven and amiable Santa Claus.
I began to climb out of my chair, but he waved me to stay where I was.
‘Don’t move. I’ll join you in a whisky.’ He consulted a narrow, gold wrist-watch, worn on the inside of his wrist. ‘Quarter past six. I don’t believe in drinking spirits before six, do you?’
I said it was a good rule, but rules should be broken now and then if one was to preserve one’s sense of freedom.
He paid no attention to what I was saying. There was look of aloof disinterest on his face that hinted he seldom ever listened to anything anyone said to him.
‘You’re the chap who’s going to pay them the ransom money,’ he went on, stating a fact and not asking a question.