Goodbye California - Alistair [47]
Ryder said indifferently: ‘I’d blackmail you to death if you were what I think you might be. In fact, I’d put you to death without any blackmail.’ The words hung chillingly in the air. ‘I’m after something else. Where’s your safe and where’s the key to it?’
LeWinter sneered, but there was – it could have been imagined – a hint of relief behind the sneer. ‘A cheap-jack heist-man.’
‘Unbecoming language from the bench.’ Ryder produced and opened a pen-knife, then approached the girl. ‘Well, LeWinter?’
LeWinter folded his arms and looked resolute.
‘The flower of southern chivalry.’ Ryder tossed the knife to Jeff, who placed the tip against LeWinter’s second chin and pressed.
‘It’s red,’ Jeff said. ‘Just the same as the rest of us. Should I have sterilized this?’
‘Down and to the right,’ Ryder said. ‘That’s where the external jugular is.’
Jeff removed the knife and examined it. The blade was narrow and only the top half-inch had blood on it. To LeWinter, who had stopped looking resolute, it must have seemed that the arterial flood-gates had burst. His voice was husky. ‘The safe’s in my study downstairs. The key’s in the bathroom.’
Ryder said: ‘Where?’
‘In a jar of shaving soap.’
‘Odd place for an honest man to keep a key. The contents of this safe should be interesting.’ He went into the bathroom and returned in a few seconds, key in hand. ‘Do you have staff on the premises?’
‘No.’
‘Probably not. Think of the stirring tales they could tell your wife. Believe him, Perkins?’
‘On principle, no.’
‘Me neither.’ Ryder produced three sets of handcuffs – all, until very recently, the property of the police chief. One set secured the girl’s right wrist to a bedpost, the second LeWinter’s left to the other bedpost, the third, passing behind a central head-rail, secured their other two wrists together. For gags a couple of pillow-slips sufficed. Before securing LeWinter’s gag Ryder said: ‘A hypocrite like you, who makes all those stirring speeches against the Washington gun lobby, is bound to have some lying around. Where are they?’
‘Study.’
Jeff began a meticulous search of the room. Ryder went below, located the study, located the gun cupboard and opened it. No Kalashnikovs. But one particular hand-gun, of a make unknown to him, took his attention. He wrapped it in a handkerchief and dropped it into one of his capacious coat pockets.
The safe was massive, six feet by three, weighing well over a quarter of a ton and built at some time in the remote past before safe-breakers had developed the highly sophisticated techniques of today. The locking mechanism and key were woefully inadequate. Had the safe been freestanding Ryder would have opened it without hesitation. But it was set into a brick wall to a depth of several inches, a most unusual feature for that type of safe. Ryder returned upstairs, removed LeWinter’s gag and produced his knife.
‘Where’s the cut-off switch for the safe?’
‘What damned switch?’
‘You were too quick in telling me where the key was. You wanted me to open that safe.’ For the second time that night LeWinter winced, more in apprehension than pain, as the knife tip punctured the skin of his neck. ‘The switch that cuts the alarm relay to the local sheriff’s office.’
LeWinter was more obdurate this time, but not markedly so. Ryder returned downstairs and slid back a panel above the study door to expose a simple switch. He clicked this off and opened the safe. Half of it was designed as a filing cabinet, the files, in the customary fashion, being suspended by metal lugs from parallel rails. Nearly all of those were given over to personal notes on court cases that had come before him. Two files were marked ‘Private Correspondence’, but apparently weren’t all that private, as some of them had been signed on his behalf by his secretary, (Miss) B. Ivanhoe: the young lady upstairs seemed to have carried secretarial devotion to her boss to lengths above and beyond the call of duty.