Suddenly at Singapore by Gavin Black Page B

see that the lock was down when I went out the main door. I wrote a note and left it on the pad for her, telling her I’d been called away suddenly. She was to say I’d be back in a few days, and cancel my appointments meantime.
    Russell had made me feel alone. It was a feeling I’d never had with Jeff alive. There was more than excitement ahead this time, for with it was the sense of being a little lost, of leaving no one behind in control. That control had been so tight and firm.
    That building full of offices went almost still for a time in the middle of the day. This was the time and I had to use it. I went out, the business man leaving his office a little late for lunch, doing everything I had to, locking doors. The passage seemed empty, but when I went into the L where the lifts were, one of Kang’s men was standing there reading a newspaper. He had been bored until he saw me.
    Kang liked them young, this one was scarcely more than a youth and an athletic youth at that. Only a few years ago he could have been a member of one of the Young Comrades school cadre. There’d be no record of this on his recruitment form, of course, nor on that of his pal waiting in a doorway somewhere. I hadn’t time to place the pal, it didn’t matter, but he would be on this floor, probably behind me somewhere. A third man was almost certainly in the lobby downstairs keeping an eye on the lifts. There was a pattern in the way they did things, a shade too methodical, I’d had time to observe it.
    The man with the paper went on reading. I pressed the button and waited, my back to him. The lift came up from below, with a clanking. The doors opened and I got in.
    When I turned Kang’s boy was folding his newspaper. He was just about to come forward and use my lift when I smiled. Somehow that stopped him. He looked for a moment sheepish, waiting there.
    The doors of my lift clanged. I began to go down. I’d pushed for the ground floor but you could change your mind in these models, if you did it at just the right moment. I knew that above me two men would be waiting for the other lift, and the boy below would have seen the flash of the light indicating a descent.
    Just when I was over it I pressed the buzzer for the first floor. There was a grumbling sound and the lift came to a stop, slowly. This wouldn’t show below, I knew that. The man down there would be waiting for the little cabin to arrive as signalled. It would be a moment or two before he tumbled to the fact that it wasn’t coming.
    In the corridor I ran, away from the lifts and the stairs. A girl came out of a door and looked at me. I knew her face and she knew mine. She stared, opened her mouth, but didn’t say anything. With the girl watching I had to open the fire-escape window at the end of the passage, a french door. For a moment it didn’t want to open.
    Then I was out on an iron grille. The fire-escape was solid up the back of the building except for the last drop which operated automatically when you stepped on it, rather like a ship’s gangway. But it hadn’t been used for a long time. I had to bounce on it. Then there was a frightful din, of old metal clattering. A weight rose and we went down, those steps and me. I was jumping down them, like a man playing tricks with an escalator. The base clanged on to concrete.
    I ran across the courtyard, pulled open a double gate and stood there with my back to it for a moment. Kate’s Ford was parked across the pavement with its engine running. I heard a shout from the fire-escape, then feet on it.
    Kate didn’t turn her head, but she had her car moving before I was in the back.
    “Into that side street!”
    “I know,” she said. “You’d better keep down out of sight.”
    “Anybody seen us from the pavement?”
    “No. I couldn’t see anyone standing around, if that’s what you mean.”
    She was in the side street, swinging down towards the bund. If the boys had a car it would take them time to get to it. And