"O'Donnell, Peter - Modesty Blaise 09 - Dragon's claw" - читать интересную книгу автора (O'Donnell Peter)

Dr. Feng was almost sure that Beauregard Browne, while in his late teens, had arranged the death of his parents in some way, but had yet to pick up confirmation of this. The red-haired girl's last remark added a little weight to the theory but was hardly conclusive. Still, as a psychiatrist he was used to working with tenuous evidence.
There were more gaps and speculation than substance in Dr. Feng's notes. He would dearly like to have known when Beauregard Browne and Clarissa de Courtney-Scott had first become a criminal team, and when the Reverend Uriah Crisp had joined them. He had been told by The Patron that these three had been operating together for a number of years, but precise data on them was annoyingly scanty.
Clarissa called, "Well done, Uriah. Jolly good." The man in black had reached the garden immediately below the balcony, walking at a solemn pace, his usually intense face relaxed and almost sleepy. He glanced up and shook his head pityingly. "Lay no merit upon me, dear friend. Had the man been without sin, he would have prevailed. It is ever the Lord's finger on the trigger, not mine."
He made a sign of blessing and moved on into the house. Beauregard Browne turned and went through the open windows into the big living room. Clarissa and Dr. Feng followed. The furnishing was simple but pleasant, canework chairs and settees, folk-weave cushions, thick rugs scattered on a cool terrazzo floor, a few oriental pictures, and some Polynesian wood-carvings on the walls.
Beauregard Browne sprawled on a settee, carefully hitched up a leg of his pale lilac trousers before crossing that leg over the other, and said, "Drinkies, Clarissa."
Dr. Feng said, "Our friend, Uriah. May one ask how he selects sinners for execution?"
"For trial," Beauregard Browne amended, and stared fixedly at Dr. Feng for several seconds. "Yes, one may ask, Doctor, and the answer is that he doesn't select them. They are selected by the Almighty, who informs me, and I inform Uriah. Uriah may be the Hammer of God, but I am, as it were, His earthly Mouthpiece."
Dr. Feng chuckled. "Most convenient."
"So we have found, even in more complex circumstances."
"More complex?"
"When we have no leisure for the delicious trial-by-combat system. When we are operational, Doctor. I might, for example, post Uriah outside a door and tell him that anyone who comes along is a sinner. The mere act of coming along is definitive."
Clarissa put a tall iced drink in Beauregard Browne's hand and laughed. Dr. Feng watched the bouncing of her fine and unfettered bosom with interest. "Honestly Beau," she said, "you're sometimes so frightfully crude with Uriah. I mean, you practically say it as plainly as you said it just now, hardly wrapping it up at all. Last time, in Milan, well, I really wondered how he could go on believing you about sinners and all that. Doctor?"
"A fruit juice, please. I think you will find, Miss de Courtney-Scott, that on one level Mr. Crisp has never believed it. On another level he persuades himself to do so by his own rhetoric, because it is necessary if he is to use a gun. That is his over-riding need, to use a gun." He looked at Beauregard Browne. "May one ask if he is a genuine clergyman?"
The violet eyes fixed disconcertingly on Dr. Feng's left ear. "Well now, beloved physician, one may not ask too many questions. It's a bad principle, don't you think? However, just this one. Yes, Uriah was duly ordained. One glimpse of his father and you realised that the poor sod was ordained from birth to be ordained. John Knox, fire and brimstone— or do I mean Calvin? Clarissa, do I mean Calvin?"
"Golly, I don't know, Beau. I remember we spent about a month at that ghastly place in Berkshire as paying guests at the vicarage, while you were sizing up the job at Homerton Hall."
"Clarissa opened new doors for Uriah," said Beauregard Browne, and grinned. "We were supposed to be a married couple, of course, but I'm hardly enough for her, even at my most hetero."
"Uriah showed me his secret," said Clarissa. "Ten years of a magazine called Guns & Ammo in a chest under his bed, plus a dozen different model handguns, perfectly carved in hardwood and accurately weighted, and a variety of homemade holsters." She carried a glass to where Dr. Feng sat, and gave him a stimulating view of her cleavage as she bent to put the drink beside him. "How much later was it when we found him in California, Beau?"
"About two years, sweetie. But it turned out that he vanished from the vicarage only a month after we left, and got himself equipped for real shooting as soon as he reached the States." Beauregard Browne looked at Dr. Feng. "Would you know what a dude ranch is?"
"Yes. I have not seen one, but I understand the term."
"He was doing shooting exhibitions there, dressed as a cowboy. He's a natural genius with a gun, of course, but unfortunately he's terrified of horses, cows, or anything on four legs bigger than he is, and this rather marred his Junior John Wayne image." One elegant hand flickered in a languid gesture. "So we took him away and began training him for more suitable work. And found a new name for him—just to keep the record straight in your little dossier, Doctor."
Dr. Feng nodded slowly, noting his own unease with professional interest. "Yes, I have a case-book on him," he said. "After all, I am a psychiatrist, Mr. Browne."
"True, duckie. And at this moment I have a passionate interest in your psychiatric opinion, but not of Uriah, thank you very much. It's the escapee whose condition engages me, as it does Our Patron, who spoke somewhat tersely to me on the radio link yesterday."
Dr. Feng stared. "I hope you do not suggest that I am to blame for the fact that Mr. Lucian Fletcher escaped from custody and from the island?"
Beauregard Browne smiled wearily. "Don't be touchy, my little cabbage. You're supposed to be inscrutable, aren't you? Barboza went to sleep on duty and left the door unbarred. Lucian Fletcher must have been sufficiently compos mentis to do a bunk. No blame to you. Barboza was immediately responsible, and he won't do it again. Condori was secondarily responsible, and I've kicked his arse and stopped his pay." He smoothed an eyebrow. "I myself am ultimately responsible, but I shan't depart а la Barboza, possibly because Our Glorious Patron knows that my mental anguish will be suffering enough, but more probably because I should be extremely difficult to replace and even more difficult to kill, and I'll have another little drinkie, Clarissa, ma belle."
She emerged, rather heavy-eyed, from an erotic reverie, said "Righty-ho," and rose to take his glass.
Beauregard Browne said, "Now let us consider the alternatives for the boring Mr. Fletcher. He took a small inflatable with enough fuel for about twenty-four hours, and since he got away soon after dusk he had a nice long start. With the radar being on the blink I rather doubt if we'd have spotted him even if I could have taken up the Teal, but that was stripped down for maintenance in the hangar, and our mad scudding around in the powerboat got us nowhere."
"The sea's jolly big," said Clarissa, handing him his replenished glass.
"Profoundly true, sweetie. And that's rather good for us. Outside the shipping lanes you can go on practically for ever without seeeing a damn thing except lots of water. So what's most likely to happen is that within the next few days the tedious Mr. Fletcher will die of thirst, since he had no water as far as we know. If he did, it will take longer, that's all. And eventually, if the boat isn't sunk by a tropical storm or a petulant whale, he might be found years hence, anywhere on the seven seas, a drifting skeleton, yet another mystery of the unfathomable briny. Have you arranged for the technician to fly in and put the radar right?"
"Tomorrow, Beau."
"A vigorous chap. He might also serve you while he's here, my pretty." Beauregard Browne stretched out a leg and admired the lilac toenails revealed by the open sandals. "The only other alternative for our Mr. Fletcher is that he just might be picked up. Highly improbable, like winning a football pool, but then people do win football pools, don't they?" He looked at Dr. Feng again. "Now, if that happens, what we want to know is this, O Flower of the East. Are you quite sure your brain-washing will hold?"
Dr. Feng took out a packet of cigarettes and lit one. He knew Beauregard Browne did not like him smoking, but felt this was a suitable moment to show a measure of self-assertion. "You know I cannot guarantee that, Mr. Browne," he said casually. "I had Mr. Fletcher under treatment for sixteen days, and would have continued for perhaps another seven before making him available to you for testing. However, it is my opinion that the memory blocks I created will resist penetration either by Mr. Fletcher himself or by any person other than myself."
Clarissa was paying attention now. She said briskly, "But he escaped, Doctor. Surely he can't fail to remember what he escaped from. I mean—his cell, you, the guards, this island, everything and everyone he saw here."
"One must realise, Miss de Courtney-Scott, that I had reached the preliminary testing stage with Mr. Fletcher. I was opening and shutting various boxes in his mind, both by immediate suggestion and by post-hypnotic suggestion. This is essential in order to establish total control, and you may remember my instructions were that I should not destroy his memory or personality, but simply erase selected memories." Dr. Feng shrugged. "One must operate the keys to make sure they work, you understand."
Beauregard Browne said, "Do I take it, dear friend, that the ghastly Fletcher was able to conceive the very idea of escape because you had temporarily opened a few boxes in his napper?"
"Napper?"
"His head, sweetie-pie. You had allowed a little memory to seep out."
"Yes. For a time he knew where he was and knew what was happening to him. But there was at all times an overriding command which limited the period of his awareness. The boxes, as we have called them, would be firmly sealed from nightfall on the day following his escape."
"You can be as precise as that?"
"Yes."
"But not quite so certain that sometime, somewhere, a box might not just accidentally pop open?"
"It would require a massive shock, and even this would be unlikely to break down the blocks."
Beauregard Browne drained his glass and stood up. "Then we shall have to see, shan't we?" he said lightly. "We shall also have to keep our ear to the ground, I fancy. And if the dreary Fletcher should be spared a watery grave, then we shall have to be rather spry. But for the moment I shall go and spend an hour on Paradise Peak with my little friends."
Clarissa had resignedly expected this, knowing that the Reverend Uriah Crisp was not the only one whose interest in her body was somewhat assuaged by a killing. In the days before radar had been installed, Paradise Peak had served as a lookout point. Now it was Beau's special preserve, with the long glass-houses and all the equipment for tending his little friends, the variety of rare orchids he grew with such immense delight and pride. He would go to the chair-lift now, and be carried up to the peak, there to perform his green-fingered mysteries. Clarissa remembered his white fury when a freak storm had broken a few panes of glass, killing some of his specimens at the time of their blooming. After that, workmen had been brought in to build a small chalet up there, a hut where Beauregard Browne would sleep if very severe weather was forecast, ready to improvise repairs with polythene sheets.
Clarissa sighed inwardly. It was very beautiful on the wide sunken crest of Paradise Peak, and the thought of Beau delicately cross-pollinating his little friends up there, or whatever he did with them, was very frustrating. She could have found much more enjoyable things for him to do.
Dr. Feng carried his cigarette to the window to flick ash from it. "What is my situation here, now that I no longer have a subject for treatment?" he said.
Clarissa squeezed her hands palm to palm between her substantial thighs, and her eyes became a little dreamy. Beauregard Browne said, "Oh, you'll have another in due course, Doctor dear. Our Illustrious Patron remains greatly attached to his new idea of preserving secrecy by adjusting the memory of his distinguished guests rather than by adjusting their life-span. Meantime you must simply enjoy yourself here in whatever way you please. The facilities are reasonably comprehensive, as you have seen, and I've decided that they now include Miss de Courtney-Scott—if she so wishes, of course."
"Of that you may be sure," said Clarissa, and laughed with relief. "Honestly, I'm in an awful state. It always turns me on frightfully, watching Uriah deal with a sinner." She stood up, moved across the room and stood very close to Dr. Feng, a tall meaty girl, her eyes level with his, her large breasts almost touching him. "Oh, Dr. Feng," she said earnestly, "I do hope you find me sexually desirable."
Dr. Feng was undergoing a release of tension, for certain logical fears as to his immediate future had apparently proved groundless. Until this moment the girl had aroused no particular emotion in him, but quite suddenly the female animal potency of her, urgent and demanding, caught him by the throat and sent desire surging through his loins. He thought of his cool, air-conditioned bedroom, and the girl's big naked body writhing with his on the bed. A prickle of sweat touched his brow, and he forced a smile. "Of that you may be sure, Miss de Courtney-Scott," he said.
Beauregard Browne ran a hand through his tight golden curls, picked up a telephone, and spoke into it. "Radio room." After a pause he said, "I want a twenty-four hour listening watch set up on emergency frequencies, with regular sweeps on the amateur bands. Arrange it, will you." He put the instrument down, waggled his fingers vaguely in the direction of his companions, and said to Clarissa, "I'll need you for a couple of hours dreary old workies in the office after lunch, poppet. Do make sure our matchless mind-bender doesn't spare himself with you this morning, because your work does become a teensy bit sub-marvellous when you're not entirely slaked, doesn't it? I mean, doesn't it?"