The Golden Horns. John Burke

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СКАЧАТЬ went in and prodded the button for the lift. First floor, they had told him on the telephone. It was not far to walk, but this was not the sort of day when anyone walked more than he had to.

      The lift purred up; the doors opened; across a richly carpeted passage another door faced him.

      He went in.

      The brunette behind the desk just inside the door looked up and smiled. Then she blinked at Martin, and smiled even more.

      Fifteen years ago he would have been wild with delight at knowing he could make women look at him like that. Now it didn’t matter—not as much as it had done, anyway.

      “Yes, sir?” Zoe Peters said in a breathless voice that sounded as though it might rush up an octave if not kept strictly under control.

      “I have an appointment with Mr. Logan. Martin Slade.”

      “Mr. Slade,” she repeated. “Yes. Oh, absolutely, Mr. Slade.”

      A moment later he was being shown into a spacious, well-appointed room overlooking the Square. A man rose from behind the desk to meet him.

      Martin, who had had doubts on his way here, was suddenly sure that he had done right in coming. He knew that he had come to the right man

      David Logan said: “Sit down. Mr. Slade.”

      Martin had met men like this during the war—not many, for there were not many of this calibre. When you met them, you knew them right away. Apparently dispassionate, saturnine men whose rare smiles were sardonic and disillusioned, they were capable of endurance to a degree beyond that of most mortals.

      Martin had seen such a man smoke his last cigarette, tell a joke, break into an unexpectedly charming grin, and then go out towards death with steely determination in his eyes and all the tense magnificence of a fearless tiger.

      He said: “I’d like you to help me. Mr. Slade, but I’m not sure if the job is up your street.”

      “Just give me a few details, and we’ll see. I get a lot of varying traffic up my street, you know!”

      “Actually,” said Martin slowly, trying to work out what he must say and how best to start, “I think it concerns a murder.”

      “You think it concerns a murder?” One satanic eyebrow lifted querulously.

      “The Clifford murder,” said Martin. “You’ve read about it this morning?”

      David Logan nodded. “But if you know anything about that—anything at all—you ought to be telling the police. I’m not the man for you. It’s your duty—”

      “I know all that,” interrupted Martin. “But I can’t talk to the police. There are reasons.”

      “Then why come to me? If you want to pass on information anonymously to the police, I can arrange that for you, but frankly I’ve got more important things to do.”

      “Nothing like that,” said Martin. “I want you to work for me. I’ll tell you the whole story, and then—”

      “Just a moment.”

      Logan leaned forward and flicked a switch. The breathless voice of Zoe Peters crackled with a hollow note in the speaker.

      “Yes, Mr. Logan?”

      “Is Miss Dane in?”

      “She’s just brought those slides in for Mr. Marston. They’re going over them together.”

      “Ask her to come in, will you?”

      David Logan sat back in his chair the shape of his head making a lean, devilish silhouette against the brightness outside the window.

      There was a brief silence. It was broken by the slight click of the door

      Martin looked round; and got up.

      “This is my secretary, Miss Dane,” Logan was saying. “Carol, this is Mr. Slade, who promises some startling revelations about the Clifford murder. Have you got a note pad for the salient points?”

      Carol Dane shook hands with Martin, flipped open a small pad, and slid gracefully into a chair in the corner of the room. One slim, nylon-sleek leg was crossed over the other. Her honey-blonde head bowed over the pad, and then lifted as she glanced inquiringly at Martin.

      David Logan said: “Well, Mr. Slade? Let’s have it from the beginning. The whole thing. Then tell me what you want me to do…and I’ll tell you if I’m prepared to do it.”

      Martin told him. He started with the call from Henning Holtesen, and reached the incident of the blow he had received on the head. Then he paused for a moment, sorting out details in his mind.

      “You’ve no idea who attacked you?” Logan prompted.

      “None at all. When I came round, I felt so sick that it took me quite a time to get myself straightened out. Then I checked up on the flat. Nothing had been stolen, but the whole place had been turned upside down. No….” He frowned, anxious to be exact. “That’s not quite true. My cases—the cases I’d just brought back from Denmark—had been literally torn apart. Everything had been taken out, and the hinges were wrenched off. It looked as though it had been done in a fit of fury. But someone might have been looking for a false side to the case or something of that sort.”

      “And the rest of the flat? That had been treated in the same way?”

      Martin shook his head. “Not quite the same. It had been turned out but rather hastily—as though that were a last resort.”

      “You mean that whatever the intruder was looking for must have been, according to his reckoning, in the cases you had just brought back with you? Searching the rest of the flat was just a last despairing effort.”

      “Something on those lines,” Martin agreed.

      Logan’s lips were pursed.

      “And when the search proved fruitless—”

      “He moved on to Sean Clifford.”

      “The connection being your friend Birgitte,” said Logan. “Mrs. Holtesen asks you to smuggle something out of Denmark for her. You refuse. She picks up this young impressionable Clifford chap and, a few days after his return from Copenhagen, he’s murdered. By whom?”

      “That’s what I’d like to know,” said Martin.

      “It’s what the police would like to know,” observed Logan grimly. He stared penetratingly at Martin. “Have you any ideas at all on the subject?”

      “I might have some ideas,” said Martin, “if I had any idea of what it was I was supposed to smuggle. Maybe this business has nothing whatever to do with that—but I shall be surprised if that’s the case.”

      “It would be quite a coincidence. Hm.” Logan pushed a cigarette box across the desk, and leaned forward with a lighter. Smoke swirled about his head, blurring its sun-sharp outline, “Yes, it’s a great pity you didn’t find out what СКАЧАТЬ