Free Gay Phoenix by Michael Innes

was to turn up, to join in the sinister operation, on the following day. So a tremendous tour de force was required. Just contrive that, and these timely emanations from an underworld would do his job for him.
    ‘Then I’m afraid that curtains for Butter it is.’
    Povey found that he had produced these words without the slightest idea of how he was to follow them up. Yet his only difficulty in uttering them had been occasioned merely by a fastidious dislike of low language. They were a deliberate challenge to his own powers of improvisation and invention. And with them he had burnt his boats. It had become instantly impossible for him to withdraw from his exposed situation with some vague words about a mistaken identity. But what on earth was he to say next?
    Fortunately his ferocious companion seemed for the moment to expect nothing further in the way of verbal communication. He sat back on his chair so violently that it creaked ominously beneath the strain, and then slapped his thigh with such vigour that several people glanced at him disapprovingly from the surrounding tables. His facial expression, too, had become alarming, since it had contorted itself into lines expressive of naked sadistic anticipation. It was plain that he was delighted by what he had heard, and that he very distinctly had it in for Butter, regardless of Butter’s present degree of proven unreliability. Povey – who had never associated with any species of criminal, barring a few discreet swindlers in the upper and middle reaches of society – had to confess to himself that he was almost as scared of this potential ally as he was of his acknowledged adversary, the too well-informed Butter. If he didn’t now play his cards well (and swiftly) he might find himself between the devil and the deep sea.
    ‘It’s that bloody big reward,’ the ferocious man said with disgust. ‘There ought to be a law against such things. Banks, insurance companies: they’d buy your own brother off you without a blush. Shameful, it is. Playing on human frailty. And downright bribery, with good public money passing on the quiet. You wouldn’t believe.’ The ferocious man was now speaking on a note of quiet bitterness. ‘Creating snouts the length and breadth of the land. Snouts under your bleeding bed. Or between the sheets with you. Your own mother may be a bloody grass.’
    ‘It’s a shocking thing,’ Povey said. This seemed a perfectly safe and acceptable comment, even if it was a little on the mild side.
    ‘Just that. Creates distrust, you might say. It’s that offer of £10,000 he’s after?’
    ‘It’s the £10,000. He named the sum.’ Povey considered this mendacious statement. ‘Foolhardy of him,’ he added.
    ‘You’re telling me. Bloody nitwitted thing to come out with.’
    ‘Yes, wasn’t it? But it’s vanity, you know. That’s the downfall of all those small fry. Vanity. Can’t resist making a big mouth about something.’
    ‘That’s it.’ The ferocious man nodded sagely. But then a glance of what might almost have been called dim suspicion appeared on his face. ‘Say!’ he said. ‘How you get this out of Butter?’
    ‘Oh, I got into talk with him. Earlier this evening, it was.’
    ‘So you did.’ The ferocious man was impressed. ‘I saw you at it. Quick work. So what?’
    ‘I got him on to his work here. A pretty low-class job. Pay’s dirt, he said. He shifts dirt and he earns dirt. But he’s had enough, he says. There’s money waiting for him when he cares to ask for it. And for no more than a bit of information he happens to carry round in his head.’
    ‘Cor! Did he name the bank?’
    ‘No, no. It was all no more than hints and mutterings. But I put two and two together. That was what I’m here for.’
    ‘True enough.’ The ferocious man nodded approvingly. ‘And you think he might decide to cough up fairly soon?’
    ‘Tomorrow.’
    ‘Tomorrow !’ The ferocious man turned pale, and at the same time stiffened