Free The Kremlin Letter by Noel; Behn Page B

make me?”
    â€œSomething like that.”
    â€œCan you?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œWithout killing me?”
    â€œYes.”
    Janis winked at Rone. “Would you like to bet on it, chappie? Say, five hundred pounds—fifteen hundred dollars, that is?”
    â€œCan you cover it?”
    â€œI would trust that my credit is still good?”
    â€œNot for this.”
    â€œOh,” Janis said, with visible disappointment. “That complicates matters.”
    â€œAnd if I don’t bring you out,” Rone reminded him, “then they will send someone else who can.”
    â€œWhy should I do anything for them? After all, they let me rot for five years.”
    â€œThey’ve all rotted for five years—most of them even longer.”
    Janis was silent for a moment. “I owe nothing to the Highwayman. If it were Sturdevant then things would be different.”
    â€œSturdevant is dead.”
    Janis roared with laughter. “Good God, don’t tell me they have you believing that whore’s cry too. Look, chappie, I know Sturdevant. And I tell you he never could or would take his own life.”
    â€œThen where is he?”
    â€œHe’s waiting, my boy. Somewhere, someplace he’s waiting, like a lion in the thicket. He’ll be out when the time is right. You mark my words, chappie, he’s waiting.”
    â€œYou sound very sure.”
    â€œI am very sure. He’s too competitive to stay out much longer. I knew him better than any living man. I know what makes him tick. You see, he’s a gambler at heart. Just as I am, except that he is slightly better. He has more patience than any man I know. That’s what a great gambler needs above all other traits. You must learn to sit on your hands. You must learn not to move until the time is propitious. You wait until either the odds are in your favor or the stakes are so high you cannot refuse. When either one of those things occurs, Sturdevant will show his face.”
    â€œI’ve heard that he was a coward.”
    â€œYou’ll hear many things. That he was frightened, perverted, sadistic. No matter who you talk to there will be a different story. Remember just one thing. You will only hear what that Sturdevant wants you to hear. He thrives on confusion. But you see, he’s the last of the great hunters. He needs an even fight. In this day and age that isn’t easy to find. So he’s developed a thousand little devices to keep him out of meaningless skirmishes. Very few people can understand this. Since time began very few people have ever been able to understand the brave man, and almost none have understood the just man.”
    â€œI still have to bring you with me,” Rone reminded him.
    â€œAnd I don’t think I care to go,” Janis stated. “It isn’t as much to do with the Highwayman as you think. You see, there’s a basic law of physics which states that at one time or another all bodies within this atmosphere must come to rest. I think I have come to rest here. Like Sturdevant I desire a fair fight and I have found it here. I’m a sensualist, old man. I trade in human weakness—usually sexual.
    â€œMan’s self-indulgence and animalism is my stock in trade. As long as one male is left on earth who bothers to look up a skirt other than his wife’s, I will prevail. As long as one woman eyes another and gets some inexplicable physical reaction, I thrive. Fetish and taboo are my creed. Take away religion and law, kill conscience, revert to what we really are—and I no longer exist. That’s why this place fascinates me. These Indians are completely devoid of inhibition. They are totally amoral. There isn’t one physical impulse that they won’t explore with the innocence and intensity of a child. What little twinge of morality they might have contracted from progress is eliminated by that mushroom soup they drink.
    â€œI ask you,