The Way to Dusty Death by Alistair MacLean

take Mary in to dinner. I’m going into the dining-room. I’m afraid if I were to stay-’
    ‘It’s all right, James. I understand.’
    Harlow watched the calculated snub of the departing back without expression, an absence of outward feeling that quickly changed to a certain apprehension as he saw Mary bearing down on him. No question now as to whom the unspoken .hostility had been directed. She gave the very distinct impression of having been waiting for him. That bewitching smile that had made her the sweetheart of the race-tracks was, Harlow observed, in marked abeyance. He braced himself for what he knew was going to be a low but correspondingly fierce voice.
    ‘Must you let everybody see you like this? And in a place like this.’ Harlow frowned in puzzlement. ‘You’ve been at it again.’
    He said : that’s right. Go ahead. Wound an innocent man’s feelings. You have my worded bond — I mean my bonded word —’
    ‘It’s disgusting! Sober men don’t fall flat on their faces in the street. Look at the state of your clothes, your filthy hands. Go on! Just look at yourself.’
    Harlow looked at himself.
    ‘Oh! Aha! Well, sweet dreams, sweet Mary.’
    He turned towards the stairs, took five steps and halted abruptly when confronted by Dunnet. For a moment the two men looked at each other, faces immobile, then there was an almost imperceptible lift of Dunnet’s eyebrow. When Harlow spoke, his voice was very quiet.
    He said : ‘We go now.’
    The Coronado?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘We go now.’

CHAPTER SIX
    Harlow drained his coffee — it was by now his invariable custom to breakfast alone in his bedroom —and crossed to the window. The famed Italian September sun was nowhere to be seen that morning. The overcast was very heavy, but the ground was dry and the visibility excellent, a combination making for ideal race-track conditions. He went into the bathroom, opened the window to its fullest extent, removed the cistern cover, took out the scotch, turned on the hot water tap and systematically poured half the contents of the bottle into the basin. He returned the bottle to its hiding-place, sprayed the room very heavily with an airfresh aerosol and left.
    He drove alone to the race-track - the passenger seat in his red Ferrari was rarely occupied now-to find Jacobson, his two mechanics and Dunnet already there. He greeted them briefly and in very short order, over-ailed and helmeted, was sitting in the cockpit of his new Coronado. Jacobson favoured him with his usual grimly despondent look.
    He said: ‘I hope you can give us good practice lap-time today, Johnny.’
    Harlow said mildly: ‘I thought I didn’t do too badly yesterday. However, one can but try.’ With his finger on the starter button he glanced at Dunnet. ‘And where is our worthy employer today? Never known him to miss a practice lap before.’
    ‘In the hotel. He has things to attend to.’
    MacAlpine did, indeed, have things to attend to. What he was attending to at that moment had by this time become almost a routine chore — investigating the current level of Harlow’s alcohol supply. As soon as he entered Harlow’s bathroom he realized that checking the level of scotch in the bottle in the cistern was going to be a mere formality: the wide open window and the air heavy with the scent of the aerosol spray made further investigation almost superfluous. However, investigate he did: even though he had been almost certain what to expect, his face still darkened with anger as he held the half empty bottle up for inspection. He replaced the bottle, left Harlow’s room almost at a run, actually ran across the hotel foyer, climbed into his Aston and drove off in a fashion that might well have left the astonished onlookers with the impression that he had mistaken the forecourt of the Villa-Hotel Cessni for the Monza circuit.
    MacAlpine was still running when he arrived at the Coronado pits: there he encountered Dunnet who was just leaving