Message From Malaga by Helen MacInnes Page A

and intense, and watchful. The grin on the gaunt face had widened, become even friendly. The voice was friendly, too. Gentle, hesitant, disarming. “Thought I’d look around, you know. Take some notes. I’m a writer. This place, you know, is weird, man. Really weird.” He shook his head in disbelief. “I got lost, you know—yes, got lost all over this place. Weird, man, weird.” He had mounted the first four steps, casually, as he talked; he halted there, one foot splayed slackly on the next tread. In one limp hand he held a small notebook; in the other, a heavy fountain pen. Casual and relaxed, that was Laner. He stifled a sneeze, exchanged the notebook for a crumpled handkerchief in his hip pocket, blew his nose. “Must be a thousand years old. You know. Beautiful, man, beautiful. And up there?” He gestured vaguely with the pen towardthe landing, his eyes looking past Reid. Swiftly, as he swung his weight up one more step, his arm straightened. The pen’s direction shifted straight for Reid’s face.
    Reid moved, in the only direction there would be safety, swirling on the ball of his foot to vault sideways over the railing that edged the staircase. He felt its weak supports quiver under his weight, and then he was plunging down on to the floor below. It was an ugly fall, off balance because of his desperate speed, and he landed with a leg crumpled under him. There was bad pain in his arm, too, and a jarring sensation through his whole body as if everything had been shaken loose. But that was nothing compared to what he had evaded. On the staircase where he had stood, there was a small cloud of vapour from Laner’s spray gun. One mouthful of that, and he would have dropped dead. Of a heart attack, it would have been said.
    He lay motionless, his face set in a grimace as he tried not to groan, not to call out. He wondered if the sickness he felt was caused by the agony of his leg—of course he would have to fall on the leg that had been smashed once before—and did this coldness, suddenly clamped to his body, come simply from shock? Or as he had turned aside, up there, face averted, breath held, eyes closed even before he made the leap, had he even then been a fraction of a moment too late? Obviously he hadn’t caught much, if any, of the cyanide vapour or he wouldn’t be alive. But he was sick and cold and pain-racked, losing consciousness. He thought he heard footsteps. He couldn’t be sure. Perhaps someone had come down to stand over him, and then gone away. He couldn’t be sure. He clamped his teeth tightly, lay there, as still as death.

3
    In the courtyard, the dance was exploding into a swirl of sound and movement. No one had heard Reid’s fall, far less Laner’s own light jump, back down the staircase, to the threshold of the open door. He drew into its side, keeping out of view from the nearest table, uncovered his mouth and nose, slipped his handkerchief along with the spray gun and its spent ampoule into his trouser pocket. He drew a deep breath of fresh clean air.
    Nothing to it, he thought. Nothing to it. I stood below the pig and fired upward. Couldn’t get a whiff even if I hadn’t had my face covered. He fell for it, he fell, all right. Sure it was a risk, but I’m here, and he’s flat on his face. Better check?
    Cautiously, Lane circled around the bottom stair, looked down at Reid but not too near. Reid might have carried some of that vapour with him. They said it disappeared at once; they said it left no trace. But they also said that before you fired that gun you had to take the antidote, a day before. A day before.As if you could always plan these things in advance, as if you were clairvoyant or something... Laner moved cautiously back to the door. You grab the chance, that’s what you do. It comes, and you grab it. That’s what I did. No pill in advance. And I’m feeling fine.
    But as an afterthought, he took the handkerchief out of his pocket and dropped it behind a barrel. And