Comes the Dark Stranger by Jack Higgins Page A

eyes, a sudden emptiness inside him, and then he remembered. He gripped her arm and pulled her close. ‘But I’ve been into the garage,’ he said. ‘I’ve checked the car. It’s still wet from the rain. You forgot about that.’
    She moaned suddenly, and beat at his chest with her free hand. ‘My arm, you’re hurting my arm.’
    As Crowther started forward with a roar of rage, Shane flung the woman to one side and went to meet him. He ducked under Crowther’s arm, and then turned and pushed him solidly in the back so the other man staggered wildly across the room, his hands clawing at an old-fashioned mahogany desk to keep his balance.
    As Shane went towards him Crowther moved quickly round to the other side of the desk, and jerked open a drawer. His hand scrabbled wildly amongst a pile of documents, and when it came out he was holding a .38 Webley revolver.
    Shane took a deep breath, and stopped dead in his tracks. ‘You got a licence for that?’ he said softly.
    Crowther held the revolver steady, and there was a quiet desperation in his eyes. ‘If you know what’s good for you, you’ll get out of here before this thing goes off.’
    Mrs Crowther gave a sudden gasp and came forward quickly. She touched Shane on the arm and said pleadingly. ‘Please go now. Please go before he does something we’ll all regret.’
    For a little while Shane looked down into her frightened face, and then he walked slowly across the room and out into the hall. She opened the door for him and he moved out on to the porch. When he turned, Crowther was standing in the hall, the revolver hanging limply from his right hand. He said deliberately, ‘Don’t come back, Shane. Don’t ever come back. Get out of Burnham.’
    For a long moment they looked into each other’s eyes, and then Shane turned away and walked down towards the gate, and behind him the woman started to cry.
    The sound of that crying seemed to pursue him all the way back to the hotel, and when he reached his room he sat on the edge of the bed, his head spinning, so that he could not make sense of any of it.
    He lit a cigarette and lay back against the pillows, staring up into the darkness, and after a while there was a light tap at the door and he ran his fingers through his hair and got to his feet. When he opened the door, Laura Faulkner was standing there.
    He stood to one side, and she walked past him into the room. He closed the door and said, ‘How did you find me?’
    She shrugged. ‘It was easy. I worked my way through the classified directory, telephoning each hotel in turn.’
    He frowned. ‘You must have wanted to see me pretty badly.’
    ‘I was worried about you,’ she said. ‘Especially after that phone call this afternoon.’
    He laughed lightly. ‘It didn’t mean a thing. I thought I saw you in town, that’s all, and I wanted to make sure.’
    She was wearing a loose, open coat over a black cocktail dress that moulded her exquisite figure. Her dark hair hung down to her shoulders, framing the lovely face and she had brought a faint trace of delicate perfume into the room that set his nerves tingling.
    ‘Who’s looking after your father?’ he said. ‘Or is he fit to be left on his own?’
    She shook her head. ‘I arrange for the cleaning woman to come in if I want to go out. She’s very dependable. I was supposed to go to a party at a friend’s house tonight, but I changed my mind.’
    ‘Because of me?’ Shane said.
    ‘Because of you.’
    There was a moment of fragile stillness between them, and she seemed to sway towards him, and then there was a sudden excited whining at the door and a scratching sound.
    She laughed lightly. ‘Oh, damn that dog. I left him to look after the car.’
    She opened the door, and the Dobermann slipped into the room like a black shadow and sniffed suspiciously at Shane’s shoes before going to his mistress.
    For some inexplicable reason Shane felt alive again. He reached for his jacket, and said, ‘It