Free Message From Malaga by Helen MacInnes Page A

wineshop entrance, much closer to that back-corner table, much more obviously in use than this place; or he could have light fingers and a drug habit to support, but there was nothing down here that could be lifted without the help of two men.
    And where was Jeff? The silence worried Ferrier. No sound of voices, no laughter. He decided to try on this floor first, and quickly skirted the foot of the staircase to reach the door under the landing. He almost fell over Jeff Reid, lying sprawled, face down, one leg twisted under him.
    For a moment of complete shock, Ferrier looked down at his friend. He knelt, touched the body. It remained inert. “Good God, Jeff—” he burst out. The head turned a little, the eyes opened, the jaw unclenched, and Reid let out his first groan. His face looked ghastly under the feeble light that filtered down here from the landing; his tan had turned grey, his forehead was beaded with cold sweat, his white lips were bloodied where he had bitten them.
    He said softly, “I thought it was that—that—that little creep coming back to make sure.” He had a violent attack of shivering.
    I’ll hear about that later, Ferrier thought grimly. “I’ll get help,” he said, rising.
    Reid made an effort. “Don’t alarm the courtyard. Get Magdalena—upstairs. Blanket. Smelling salts.”
    “An ambulance is more like it,” Ferrier said, looking at Reid’s leg. Smelling salts?
    “But first—blanket. Smelling salts. Fresh air. Pull me near the draught. Pull me!” His voice was desperate.
    “You shouldn’t be moved,” Ferrier warned him, but he took Reid’s shoulders, helping him to turn on his back, and then pulled slowly for the six feet necessary to get him away from the lee of the staircase. It must have been the worst kind of torture, but Reid endured it without screaming. He groaned several times, once bit back a yell, and then lay in the cooler draught of pure air with his eyes closing. Ferrier stooped to loosen Reid’s collar and tie, and then was running two steps at a time upstairs. Afterwards, he’d wonder how he—twenty pounds lighter and two inches shorter—had managed to pull Reid’s dead weight so easily, or even how his feet had seemed to fly up these stairs, but now he thought of nothing except Magdalena.
    She heard the pounding of his feet on the wooden landing, came out to meet him as he yelled her name. He looked at her in amazement: she was old and slow-moving, not young, as he had imagined, and probably useless. He pointed down to the room below, grasped her arm to yank her over to the edge of the landing, from where she could see Reid. “Blanket—smellingsalts.” God, what was the Spanish for smelling salts? “Ammonia.” In desperation, he dragged her into the nearest room, picked up a large shawl from a chaise longue, kept saying “s els, sels ” (That was French, but what the hell.) He lifted a small bottlelike vase from a table, threw away its rose, and then sniffed at it in mime. She understood. She nodded vehemently, and pulled a small flask out from the pocket of her wide black skirt, where it had been all the time. He took it, tested it, nodded back, and turned to leave. He pointed to the telephone now, and some of his Spanish came back to him. “Call a doctor. Call the hospital. Señor Reid has broken his leg.”
    “Yes, yes.” She pulled the shawl away from him, shaking her head at man’s wastefulness, and replaced it with a less elegant (and warmer) blanket from a chest near the door. “Do not disturb the dance!” she warned him in a deep hoarse whisper. He waved a hand, ran on. Magdalena might be old, but she was neither stupid nor useless. Apart from her initial horror and fear, when she had recognised Reid lying on the floor below, she had reacted with a cool sense of the desperate need for haste.
    He ran down the staircase, noted that its only weakness was the railings: the treads were solid and firm, built to last like the rest of this place.