Dark Wanton by Peter Cheyney

Author:Peter Cheyney [Cheyney, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dean Street Press
Published: 2021-11-10T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Three

RUMBA

MONDAY

A wintry and undecided sun percolated through the net curtains of Quayle’s office windows, forming odd shadows on the carpet. The shadows reminded Quayle of a jig-saw puzzle—something akin to the one in which he found himself engrossed.

He began to think about Kospovic. He concluded that the Kospovic business might be fairly obvious. Kospovic had committed suicide because he was frightened. He was sufficiently frightened of something or somebody to desire to have done with this world and its works. He was without hope, and death seemed to him the easiest way out.

The reasons for his lack of hope were apparent. He was an alien, with a bad record, in a strange country—the only country in the world that could shelter him from the effects of his past; sick, despondent and with no line of retreat; something had happened to Kospovic after his telephone call to Quayle that had proved to him that death was preferable to a dangerous uncertainty.

The telephone call, thought Quayle, had been a last effort to protect himself from the results of the circumstances in which he found himself involved. He had hoped that Quayle would eventually do something about him. Then, after the call, the balloon had gone up. Something else had happened, and Kospovic had taken himself for his last walk and blown out his rather peculiar brains which, quick and opportunist in the past, could not help him in his present dilemma.

Frewin came into the room. He was, as usual, immaculately dressed, and the inevitable cigarette hung from the corner of his mouth. Quayle thought he looked tired.

He asked: “Well? . . .”

Frewin avoided the question. Instead he said: “You know, that girl Brown has brains. Possibly I’ve underestimated her. Possibly she’s cleverer than I thought.”

Quayle smiled. “I’ve always had a considerable opinion of Antoinette. But what made you change your opinion. Or is merely that you’re finding her a little more fascinating.” He looked sideways at Frewin. “She is fascinating, you know—or haven’t you noticed?”

Frewin shrugged his shoulders. “I was talking about her mind.”

“Yes?” said Quayle. He got up; walked over to the window; looked out. “What about Nielecki?” he asked.

“I talked to him early this morning,” Frewin answered. “I sweated him considerably. Eventually he gave me the whole story. He’s scared stiff. He thinks there’s a good chance that you may have him deported.”

Quayle went back to his seat. “He’s perfectly right. I’ve already arranged for that. What did he have to say?”

“He’d heard that Kospovic was at South Brent,” said Frewin. “So he went down to see him. He was curious about Kospovic. Nielecki knew all about him. He knew that if Kospovic was lying low it wasn’t only because of his chest. He says that Kospovic was scared and very worried; that he had to talk to somebody. So Nielecki got to work on him, and eventually Kospovic told him that he knew who had stolen the lists. Then Nielecki was intrigued. All the more intrigued because he knew that those lists were dynamite and that the knowledge that Kospovic had was dangerous.

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