Message From Malaga by Helen MacInnes Page B

he searched in his breast pocket for the small square of gauze in which a little glass vial was concealed. He felt its hardness with his thumb, crushed it with his nail to release the vapour it contained. The post-antidote, as it were. But those made sense, left a man free to choose the right time, the right place. He held the piece of gauze close against his nostrils, inhaled deeply. It took him off-guard, nearly knocked him over. Sort of intensified smelling salts, that was all it was. He had just taken too deep a breath of it. He sniffed the gauze more cautiously, as he had been taught to do. Either it was a stronger brand than the vapour he had inhaled after practising the spray gun on the dogs, or he had been more shaken than he realised and breathed in too much too quickly too violently. His eyes and throat smarted, but his head was clear. He looked into the courtyard, judging his next step. And this was it, here in this crowded place with everyone mesmerised by the dancer on the stage. The woman up there was really turning them on. Her long black hair had escaped from its coil and fallen loosely down her back almost to her waist. Her heels rippled, smashed, beat, changed the rhythms as easily as the guitarists’ fingers. Her body circled, the flower dropped to the floor. Laner slipped out of the doorway, keeping close to the wall, moved along it slowly.
    Some people from the back tables had filtered along thesides of the courtyard, stood there trying to get a better view of the dancer’s intricate steps. They made an adequate screen for Laner as he worked his way along the wall. He stopped once or twice, briefly, to watch the stage and look interested in the show. He even called “ Ole! ” with the rest of them. There were only two things necessary in this game, he decided: put on an act and keep it going; choose your moment and use it. No one saw me, no one is paying me any attention, he thought in rising exhilaration.
    Gustaf Torrens and Ed Pitt were sitting silently in their back corner. Torrens was tense, worried. Pitt was bored; the black man wasn’t letting this music reach him, perhaps on principle. And he was still smarting under Torrens’ earlier rebuke about his language. Laner had been included in that rebuke, but Pitt was nursing it as his own. “Clean out your mouths!” the Swede had told them. “Cut out that talk when you’re around me.” Torrens was too damn square, thought Laner as he neared his table. Come to think of it, all those people back in Moscow were a bunch of squares. Too many regulations, too much preaching along with teaching. What did rules and orders have to do with ideals? I’ll match mine against his, any day, thought Laner as he nodded for Torrens and slid into the chair beside him. But much of his exhilaration was dying away. He hadn’t even dropped the piece of gauze at Torrens’ elbow, as he had meant to do. A nice touch of high drama. But not now. He gave Ed a small hand-clenched sign.
    “Cut that out!” said Torrens. “Where have you been?”
    “Looking around.” Laner’s exhilaration was gone. Cut that out, cut this out; that was Torrens’ way of handling things. I say nothing, Laner decided. Nothing at all. Not here, not now.
    “What have you been doing?” Torrens asked, his voice low and intense. His blue eyes were fixed in a hard stare.
    “Just proving a point.”
    Pitt was no longer bored. He knew as little as Torrens, but he knew Laner better and he sensed something interesting. “You made it, man?” he tried.
    Torrens was baffled. His worry changed into anger. “Made what?”
    Pitt’s grin split wide across his face. “Tell the man,” he mocked in his best Alabama-bound accent. “The man wants to know.”
    Torrens’ lips tightened, but apart from that he paid no more attention to Pitt “What are you holding in your hand?” he asked, reaching out so quickly that Laner was caught by surprise. Torrens unfolded the crumpled piece of gauze,