Manly Wade Wellman - Chapbook 02 (11 page)

 
          
“Get
out,” he told Crofts.

 
          
The
other went to the door,
then
paused. His eyes gleamed
like furnaces. “You’re on your own ash-heap,” he said. “Some time we’ll get
together on equal ground.”

 
          
“Out,”
bade Stover, “or I'll drop you clear down to the canal level.”

 
          
Crofts was
gone, and Stover walked back to where Gerda sat.

 
          
“Buckalew
tells
tht
truth. You thought we’d be
dead. Why did you come here with Crofts?”

 
          
“Because
I was paid to,” she told him with cheerful irony.

 
          
“You
mean,” prompted Stover, “that you were bringing him here so that he could be
framed with the crime?”

 
          
“Or,”
put in Buckalew, “that he was the one who paid you, and you both came to make
sure we were dead?”

 
          
“That
would be telling,” Gerda replied to both questions. “Mr. Stover already knows
that I’m working for that mysterious blast-killer. I won't deny it. But I'll
deny other things. I’m a good servant.” She gazed from one to the other of
them. “And those hard looks won’t get you anywhere, either. I know that Mr.
Stover won’t hurt me physically, and that he wouldn’t let Mr. Buckalew try.”

 
          
Stover
walked to a closet and opened it. There was barely room inside for a person to
stand comfortably. “We’ll lock you up for long enough to think it over,” he
said.

 
          
With
a disdainful smile the girl sauntered across and into the narrow prison. When
he had latched the door, Stover looked at Buckalew, who had followed him.

 
          
“Well,
Dillon?” prompted Buckalew in a clear, carrying voice. “You realize that there
is no ventilation in that closet?”

 
          
There
was plenty of ventilation, but Stover took the cue.

 
          
“Of
course not,” he agreed. “I count on that to change her mind. She’ll start to
smother, and then she’ll talk.”

 
          
Gerda
said something profane from inside the closet.

 
          
“What
if she lies?” asked Buckalew.

 
          
“We’ll
shut her up again,” said Stover.

 
          
“Watch
here,” suggested Buckalew. “I’ll make a tour of the rear rooms. We don’t know
yet what damage has been done there.”

 
          
Stover
nodded agreement, and sat down in the chair facing the closet door.

           
He had not long to wait. Gerda began
to pound on the inside of the metal panel.

 
          
“Well?”
said Stover.

 
          
“Let
me out,” she pleaded in a tense, muffled voice.

 
          
“Ready
to tell us what you know?”

 
          
“No.
I daren’t. But—there’s something in here with me!”

 
          
Stover
laughed. “It’s too dark for you to see anything.”

 
          
“I
felt a touch—there it is again.” Her voice rose shrilly. “Stay away from me,
whatever you are, or I'll smash you!”

 
          
The
door shook with a deafening boom.

 
          
Even
before Stover could unfasten the latch, he knew what had happened inside. He
flung open the door, and the body of Gerda pitched limply out into his arms.

 
         
STOOPING,
Stover laid Gerda at full length upon the metal floor. Her eyes were shut, and
her face completely clear of all cunning and mocking expressions, as if she
realized that such things would avail her no longer. She was bruised and the
back of her skull was driven in, but there was surprisingly little blood.

 
          
“A
small explosion,” said Stover aloud. “First that shattering one at Malbrook’s,
then a lesser one in this parlor, and now one quite light in the closet.
Robert, come here!”

 
          
“I
am here,” said his friend behind him. “This is a bad mess, Dillon. I suppose
you realize that there would be very little chance of clearing yourself now
that someone else has been killed in your presence—and a police spy at that.”

 
          
“Did
I tell you she was a police spy, or do you know that as a man-about- Pulambar?”
demanded Stover. Then, without waiting for a reply: “All I can say is that I’m
innocent.”

 
          
“And
all I can say is that I know you are,” Buckalew assured him. “How do you know?”

           
“I said once that I'd believe in
you,”

 
          
Buckalew
reminded him gently, “and I meant it. Cover her over with this cloak.
Now, to look inside the closet.”
They both did so. Stover
saw things that had become almost familiar—a murk of pungerit nitroglycerine
vapor, a stain that would certainly prove to be traces of synthetic rubber. He
saw, too, a small hole, a ventilator like the one at Malbrook’s, but in a
corner of the floor. He poked a finger into it. “What’s below this place,
Robert?”
“Why, nothing.
Or nearly
nothing.
This tower is on a framework of steel girders, you know.
Nothing below us for hundreds of yards except crisscrossed cables
and iron bars.”

 
          
Stover
raced out onto the balcony. Amyas Crofts was not there, nor
any
moored
flying vessel. Stover threw a leg over the barred railing.

 
          
“Here,
Dillon,” called Buckalew anxiously. “What are you up to?”

           
“I’m going to have a look beneath
us,” replied Stover. “If I can swing down below just a few feet, I can see
clear under from front to back.”

           
“You think the murderer might be
down there?”

           
“I do,” said Stover, and swung his
other leg over. He was clinging to the railing with both hands, his toes
finding a ledge barely two inches wide. He tried to keep his eyes and thoughts
from the abyss below. If he fell, he’d bounce off the lower roof and drop into a
deep of two miles and more to the canal level.

 
          
“Let
me go down,” offered Buckalew. “You'd better not risk it, Dillon.
Ticklish work, climbing around.”
Buckalew should have known
that such talk would force him to the try, reflected Stover. Perhaps Buckalew
did know. The young man’s tempera- •ment would never let him pause now.
Grasping the rail in both hands, he lowered himself a trifle, one foot extended
to grope for another toehold.

 
          
“If
you insist,” Buckalew added, “I can help you.”

 
          
He
ran back into the parlor, and brought out a long dark cord of velvet fabric.
“This was used to bind the drapes at the windows,” he said. “It’s strong enough
to bear your weight on Mars. Take hold, I’ll lower you.”

 
          
Stover
had to accept. Indeed, he could not go down without such help. He gripped the
soft, tough cord, and Buckalew began to pay it out.

 
          
A
dozen feet or so Stover descended like a bucket into a well. There was nothing
below save the thin air of Mars, nothing to cling to save this velvet line held
above by one he was not sure he could trust. Then he was below the floor-plane
of the apartment, looking into an openwork mass of structural metal.

 
          
He
swung inward, catching a girder in one hand.

 
          
“Slack
off a little,” he called up to Buckalew. “I’m all right. Make the rope fast so
that I can swarm up again.” ^

 
          
Like
a sailor among rigging, Stover worked his way in among the struts, beams and
cross-pieces. He found footing upon a horizontal girder, less than ten inches
across. A higher and smaller bar of metal served as a sort of hand-rail. He
moved in gingerly fashion to a point beneath the closet where Gerda had been
overtaken by death.

 
          
“Hello!”
he exclaimed, though he did not think of anyone hearing him. “Here’s something
caught just inside. A bit of—”

 
          
With
the forefinger of his free hand he dug it out of the ventilator opening. It was
a bit of elascoid, thin as silk and flexible and stretchy as the finest rubber.
The form of it was tubular. It was the size of his forefinger and the length of
that forefinger’s two upper joints. He sniffed at it and inhaled
a pungency
like that of the explosive reek. But how could
such a limp fragment be a weapon?

 
          
He
tucked it into a pocket of the stolen tunic he still wore, preparatory to
turning carefully around to retrace his steps along the girder.

 
          
“Stand
right there,”
came
a penetrating whisper.

 
          
Stover
finished the turn, and looked back the way he had come.

 
          
Upon
the girder, not five feet away, stood a figure as tall as he, but as vaguely
draped as a ghost in a voluminous mantle of neutral gray. Over the head was a
loosely folded veil, with no holes for eyes or nose. Apparently it could be
seen and breathed through from within. One hand poked from under the robes,
heavily gloved. That hand pointed a pistol-form ray thrower straight at the pit
of Stover’s stomach.

 
          
“Stand
right there,” repeated that genderless whisper. “You have poked too close to an
awkward truth, Dillon Stover. Which death do you
choose,
the hard one or the easy?”

 
          
The
mention of death did not frighten Stover. Aside from the fact that he had
considerable personal courage, he had been in too much danger for the past
sixty hours to be much shaken now. But he recognized that his chance of escape
and pursuit of his quest had grown slim and feeble. He stood still, tense,
watchful, wondering if his already overworked luck would provide him with one
more straw at which he, a drowning man, might clutch.

 
          
“The
hard death,” he said, “because it will involve you.”

 
         
THE
robed one moved a step closer.

 
          
Stover
heard the clang of heavy metal soles. This person was standing upon stiltlike
devices to lend false height.

 
          
“Think
what you say,”
came
the whisper. “You are asking me to
burn you in two with this ray. Better a simple plunge down with quick oblivion at
the end.”

 
          
“Not
a bit of it,” flung back Stover. “I’m here on Mars for a specific purpose.
Two specific purposes.
Primarily, to bring water back and
touch this poor dried-out world into something like life again. That brought me
to Mars, and it’s a thing I won’t let go of easily. Secondarily,” and Stover’s
voice grew fierce, “there’s the job of bringing you to justice. It’ll be done.”

 
          
“It
will not be done,”
came
the sneering denial. “You die,
here and now. If I burn you with the ray—” “If you do,” finished Stover for his
threatener, “my body will drop down and be found below by the police. I’ll be
set down as a murder victim. Understand? It’ll be a clue against you, whoever
you are hiding in that fake-
melodrama robe
. You’ll be
just a little closer to discovery and destruction. Go
on,
scorch me with your ray. I’d not ask for mercy even if you were going to cook
me to death by inches.” “Wait,” said the other. “You are wise, Dillon Stover,
in your deductions about me and my intentions. You rouse my admiration. I am
tempted to give you a chance for life. A fair fight, eh?”

 
          
The
gloved hand lifted and gestured, the ray thrower’s muzzle went out of line.
Stover sprang forward on the girder, forgetting how precarious was his footing
and balance, and struck hard with his right fist into the center of that veiled
face.

 
          
His
knuckles felt as if they would explode—the veil also hid some kind of metal
visor that helped muffle and disguise the whisper. There was a swirl of
draperies as the tall body swayed back before that mighty buffet. But there was
no knockdown, no plunge from the girder.

 
          
“I
hoped that you would strike,”
came
the whisper,
exultant this time. “My shoe-soles have magnets, holding me to this metal
girder.”

 
          
Pulling
itself erect again, the robed thing clubbed him with the muzzle of the ray
thrower.

 
          
Stover
did not duck quickly enough. A blow glanced on the side of his head. He reeled,
and there were no magnetized shoe-soles to save him. He lost his footing,
plunged from the girder. Falling past it, he tried vainly to clutch it with his
hands.

 
          
He
was falling headlong. Down below, seen through cross-angled metal bars and
cables as through an intricate web, was the distant broad roof that upheld the
scaffolding.

 
          
“I’m
done for,” he told himself. “Victim
number
four of
this wild beast of Pulambar. And my body will look like the victim of accident
or suicide.
Won’t even supply a clew.”
He struck
heavily.