Manly Wade Wellman - Chapbook 02 (14 page)

           
“I know that,” said Stover. “That’s
why I want to help.”

 
          
“Leave
it to the police,” snapped

 
          
Fielding.
“I ought to demand your arrest now, Stover. Get
out, I say.” Stover turned to the door. “Tonight,” he said over his shoulder,
“I’ve stood face to face with the murderer of Mace Malbrook.”

           
It was hard to say which started the
most violently, Congreve or Fielding.

 
          
Stover
laughed, and was gone.

           
“PSSST!
Mr. Stover!"

           
Dillon Stover, stepping out on the
balcony of Malbrook’s old quarters, stopped in the very act of summoning a
flying taxi. He looked in the direction of the muttered signal.

      
    
At one end of the balcony was a service
stairway.
Upon that stairway, at a level so that only his
head and shoulders were exposed, stood someone whose outline in the gloom was
vaguely familiar.

      
    
“This way, Mr. Stover!”

      
    
He turned and approached, cautiously. Four
days of desperate action, of chasing and being chased, had made Stover give
much attention to every possibility of danger. If this was an assassin he was
going to be sorry.

      
    
But the man who had hailed him turned and
ran swiftly and furtively down the stairs. Stover followed, his body tense and
ready for any sort of action—to fly, to strike out, to beat off an attack. No
such need came. The two men gained a balcony below Malbrook’s, and here Stover
came close enough to recognize his companion.

      
    
“Captain Sharp!”

      
    
“I c-came here because—”

     
     
Stover waved away the words. “You’re in
danger, Sharp.
Mortal danger.
I warn you, not because
I value your precious carcass, but because you may be able to give evidence for
me. Your best chance is to do what I told you. Go and confess some minor crime
and get locked up
in the
police detention cells."

            
Sharp shook his head furiously.
"I found that I can't do that. There's too much fire on me."

          
The man, for all his coarseness,
had appeared strong to Stover at the earlier meetings. Now he seemed ready to crumble,
to collapse. His considerable size made him the more unwieldy in the grip of whatever
terror had him.

           
"You see," Sharp
continued, "the whisper-voice got back on the phone again after you were
gone and I was making ready to leave. That fellow, whoever he was, had heard plenty.
He said that the police were being warned about some real dirty things I'd done
—killings."

           
"And so you can't
face the music?" finished Stover for him.

           
"Not when it plays
that sort of tune."

           
"It's playing the
Dead March now," Stover informed him grimly. "Well, so you came to me.
How did you know I was here?"

           
"I didn't. I came
here after I heard at Mr. Brome Fielding's place he'd headed this way. But when
I found that a police officer was with him—"

           
"Why are you so anxious
to see Brome Fielding?" Stover interrupted.

           
"Because
he's the partner of Mace Malbrook.
Because he wants to
clear up the murder.
Because he's got enough influence to hide me and guard
me, if I can convince him it's worth his while."

           
There was the whirr of
rockets above. Sharp stepped to the balcony and looked upward.

           
"The police flyer's
leaving," he reported, "with only that cop in it. Fielding's still up
above. Let's go talk to him."

           
STOVER put out a hand to
stop Sharp, but the captain was already heading for the stairway. Stover followed
him. Their heads rose into view of the upper balcony. Fielding stood there, elbows
on the railing, looking moodily skyward. At that very moment, an air-taxi curved
in and hovered.

           
"Is that you,
Dillon?" asked a voice\ from inside. Buckalew!

           
"No," replied
Fielding sourly, "it is not."

           
Buckalew was leaning
out of the taxi, but turned to address the pilot:

           
"You say you brought
him here, and left him?"

           
"Yes, sir," answered
the man who had flown Stover to the spot some time before. "He told me to
go.
Said he'd be here for the night."

           
"Let me assure you
that he won't be here for the night," snapped Fielding. "I myself ordered
him away."

           
"Very well,"
said Buckalew in the placating tone Stover had heard him use before this when conversing
with Fielding. The taxi departed.

           
At once Sharp spoke, in
the same tone and almost the same words with which he had attracted Stover's
attention:

           
Pssst!
Mr. Fielding!"

           
Fielding spun away from
his pose of meditation. One hand whipped an electro-automatic from somewhere.

           
"Who's that?"
he demanded breathily. "Show yourself!"

           
Sharp lifted his hands,
and came up the stairs. "It's nobody you really know, Mr. Fielding," he
fawned. "My name's Captain Sharp. I wanted to ask you something."

           
"But you know me,"
put in Stover, walking up behind Sharp. "As you say, you ordered me off the
place. But I'm not taking orders from you just now. In fact, Fielding, here's one
point on which we may even collaborate. I mean Sharp here."

           
Fielding did not put away
his gun. "What's this about?" he grumbled.

           
"Sharp's a witness
in this murder case," Stover informed him. "It began when—"

           
He paused. How much should
he tell this professed enemy of his?

           
Fielding spoke carelessly,
solving the problem for him.

           
"Any evidence had
better be given to the police. I'm not as officious about this murder as you are,
Stover."

           
"Not to the
police yet," interposed Sharp. "I've got a bad record. But maybe, if
I showed up when the time was right, with evidence I could give—"

           
Fielding seemed to understand.
"And I'm to give you a hiding place, eh?" he suggested. "Well, maybe
it's my duty. Come over to the other end of the balcony, my flyer's there. You
can come, too, Stover.”

 
          
They
entered the car. It was a luxurious one, softly and richly cushioned, most of
its hull glassed in. Fielding took the pilot’s seat, a high- backed metal
construction to which, as regulations in Pulambar ruled,
a
parachute was fastened. He buckled the safety belt across his middle and took
the controls.

 
          
“Sit
here next to me, Stover,” he commanded. “Sharp, make yourself comfortable in
the rear. I can trust you better than Stover. You’re only a petty adventurer of
some kind. He’s a murder suspect.”

 
          
This with a sneer.
Stover swallowed it with difficulty and
took the benchlike chair where a co-pilot generally sat. Like Fielding, he
buckled on the safety belt. Fielding dropped into a cushioned chair behind him.
The rest of the cabin was dim, with several other seats and lockers. The flyer
took off.

 
          
“WHERE
to, sir?” asked Sharp, as though he were flying the craft and asking for
directions.

           
“My quarters, across town,” was the
reply. “There’s a place for you both to stay.”

 
          
“Both?”
repeated Stover. “You aren’t offering to put me up, Fielding?"

 
          
“I’m
telling you that you’re staying with me. The police haven’t pinned anything to
you, but just now, with this shabby Captain Sharp as a helper, you look a
trifle riper for—”

 
          
“But
you were going to guard me at your place, not turn me over to the law!” cried
Captain Sharp.

 
          
So
strident was his cry of protest that Stover turned to look at him. He saw Sharp
rising half out of his seat, hand flung forward in appeal—saw, too, in the
shadows of the cabin another human figure. The head and shoulders seemed to
hunch and expand, the face looked blank and colorless.

 
          
Thinking
of it afterward, Stover realized that he had been made furtive by the constant
thrusting upon him of danger. At the time he thought and diagnosed not at all.
He threw off the safety strap and hurled himself out of his seat on the
co-pilot’s bench, and flat on the floor so that the metal bench was between him
and whatever was lurking in the cabin.

 
          
“Fielding!”
he yelled as he hit the floor. “Sharp!
Danger—someone in here
with us.”

 
          
Fielding,
too, glanced back. His face writhed.

 
          
“You
saw—that—” he was trying to form something. His hands fumbled strangely at the
controls.

 
          
An
explosion tore their vehicle to bits. Stover's hearing sense, even while it was
shocked and deafened, sorted out the rending of fabric, the starting of joints,
the crash of tough glass. He heard, too, the brief half- scream which was all
that Sharp had time to utter before destruction overtook him.

 
          
His
prone position, in a narrow nook between bench and control board, saved Stover.
He was not thrown out, though the lower half of the flyer—all that remained
intact— turned a complete flop in the high air over Pulambar. He saw the metal
pilot’s seat go bounding away.
Fielding hanging limp in the
safety strap.
Would the attached parachute open in time to save
Fielding?

 
          
Stover
had no time to watch. For the wreckage, with him wedged among it, was falling
into an abyss.

 
          
It
struck a wire-woven festoon of walk-ways and communication cords between two
towers. The wires, though parting, broke the downward plunge a little. Stover
managed to writhe along toward the controls. He got his hands on the keyboard,
manipulating it frantically. The thing worked. A crippled blast went
pup- pup-pup,
but there was no stopping
the awful plunge.

 
          
Stover
saw the lower building- tops charging up at him, saw too the silvery expanse of
a great pool of water that, set among colored lights, did duty as a public
square.
If he could only land in that.
The gravity of
Mars was less than Earth’s, the fall was consequently slower.

 
          
He
clutched again at the controls.

           
The blast, not enough to check the
fall, could change the position of the hurtling slab of wreckage. He leveled it
out. As he had dared hope, the thing swooped slantwise in its fall. It was
approaching the pool at a fearful clip, but not vertically. Before he knew
whether to rejoice or despair the shock came, bruising and breath-taking of
impact.

 
          
The
heavy wreck sprang upward like a flat rock skimming along the surface, and
Stover was thrown clear at last. High he flew, and down he came, head first.
Somehow he got his hands into diving position. Then, with a mighty splash, the
only lake of water on all Mars received his body safely.

 
          
STOVER
struck the bottom of the lake with almost unimpeded force, but it was soft.
Turning around upon it, he let himself float to the top. It was cool, damp,
restful
. His head broke water, and he lay low between the
ripples, washing the bottom-mud out of his curls and taking stock of the
situation.

 
          
The
walks along the rim of this pool were lined with noisy sight-seers, all gazing
to a distant point in the center of the water. Great turmoil showed there, and
several light flying machines hovered and dipped above the spot where the
wreckage had sunk. Stover struck out for the nearest walk.

 
          
“Help
me out!" he called to those gathered there, and half a dozen hands reached
down to hoist him up.

 
          
“What
was that splash?" he demanded, to head off any questions and surmises.
"It knocked me right off into the water."

 
          
“You
ought to sue somebody," advised a bystander. "Some fool's flying car
came down out of control, it looked like. I just had a glimpse. Come and have a
drink to warm you up."

 
          
“Thanks,
no. I’ll get an air-taxi back to my own place," said Stover.

 
          
He
sought an elevator that took him to a rooftop where several taxis loitered. One
of them had a heater inside, and in it Stover deposited himself, directing the
pilot to take him for a leisurely tour while his clothing dried somewhat. At
length Stover gave the address of Malbrook’s fateful apartment.

 
          
It
would be empty now—or would it?

 
          
Buckalew
had come to Malbrook’s balcony, looking for Stover. He had known that Fielding
was there, that Fielding had a moored aircraft. What then?

 
          
Stover’s
mind went back to the happenings of the morning. Buckalew had been absent from
the parlor when Gerda was killed in the closet. Later had
come
evidence that the explosion was engineered from below by some strange elascoid
device.
And then the assault by the draped figure.
Later, the mysterious being was gone, while Buckalew had hauled Stover up from
his painful lodgement between those forked cables. Buckalew had been
magnificent then.
Resourceful, strong, heroic—but mysterious.

 
          
"But
if he’d wanted to kill me," reflected Stover, “he couldn’t have done it
then.
Too many curious flying folk hovering around.
Later, at
noon
,
Sharp
seems to have been visited by the same draped
whisperer I saw. Was Buckalew with me at that time? I can’t remember."

 
          
He
counted the dead in his mind.
First Malbrook, then Gerda,
then Sharp.
And perhaps Fielding.
He himself
had almost been added to the list. And, for all his struggles, he was still far
from the solution.

 
          
"Here’s
your place, sir,” the pilot broke in on his thoughts swung in to Malbrook’s
deserted and darkened balcony.

 
          
"Have
you an extra radium torch?" asked Stover.
“If so, I’ll
buy it.
Thanks, that’s a good one."

 
          
He
paid for the torch, the journey and the heater, adding a handsome tip. Then he
dismounted to the balcony. Letting the taxi fly away, he entered the now
deserted and lightless hall where once before he had stricken Brome Fielding
down and had

 
          
knocked
at a door that forthwith blew off in his very face.

 
         
HE
TURNED on the radium torch he had bought. That same door was partially repaired
now, rehinged and fastened to the jamb with a great metal seal. Stover studied
that seal. It was fused to the place where the lock had been, and marked with
an official stamp. Police had put it in place to keep out meddlers like
himself
.

 
          
But
Stover had come prepared. In his tunic pocket was a small ray projector that
had survived the fall and the soaking. Drawing it and turning it on, he rapidly
melted away the seal. He flung open the door with a creak and entered the
blasted apartment.

 
          
Plainly
it had not been touched since last he had stood inside it, disguised as a
robot, with the Martian mechanic Girra. By the light of his radium torch, he
began to make a new inspection. The elascoid stain was still on the floor near
the half-detached ventilator device.

 
          
Stover
looked at it once again,
then
turned his attention to
the metal- plated walls. He tapped them once, then again, at regular intervals.
They gave a muffled clank, indicative of their massive construction. So he
progressed, along for a space. Then, on the rear wall, the clank sounded
higher, more vibrant—almost a jingle.

 
          
“The
plating’s t h i
n ,
” decided Stover, and brought his
torch close to see.

 
          
He
found no visible juncture, and resumed his tappings. By then he defined a
rectangular hollow within the wall, about ten inches by fourteen. A hiding
hole, cleverly disguised.

 
          
Again
Stover plied his light, and this time he made a discovery. The wall at that
point had been lightly coated with metallic veneer, the exact tint and shade of
the wall. Under it the joinings of the wall cupboard would be hidden. Why, and
by whom?

 
          
Not
Malbrook, Stover decided at once. That cupboard had been devised for his use,
probably his constant use. Then someone who had been here since the explosion
wanted to seal and
hide
the place until later, when
the guilt was fixed.

           
“Yes, fixed on an innocent man,”
decided Stover wrathfully. “Then, with the police away, the hole could be
opened and whatever’s inside taken out.”

 
          
He
cut the beam of his ray until it would gush out as narrow as a needle and as
hot as a comet’s nose. Carefully he sliced through the tempered metal of the
wall-plate, along the edges of the hollow rectangle. The piece of thin metal
fell out. He caught it before it clattered on the floor, and set it carefully
down. His torch turned radiance into the recess he had exposed.

 
          
Not
much within, only a sheaf of papers and a round thing like a roll of gleaming
tape. He studied it first. It looked like the sound track of a film, or a
televiso transcription. Reynardine Phogor had said that Mal- brook's will was
in such a form. Was this the will, or something to do with it?

 
          
He
saw that one edge of the strip was mutilated, as if roughly cut away. And it
had been hidden here, in what was the safest hiding place in all Pulambar until
someone like
himself
came with a clue and an
inspiration.

 
          
Pocketing
the little roll, Stover turned his attention to the papers. At the top of the
first was a title in big capitals:

 
          
CONFIDENTIAL
REPORT
 
KISER DETECTIVE AGENCY
 
ST.
LOUIS, MO.

 
          
“Here,
I know about that Kiser crowd,” Stover told himself at once. “Political
outfit—shady w o r k—do anything for enough money. A high- class phony like
Malbrook would use just such a detective outfit. But what’s a Pulambar biggy
doing with shyster sleuths clear across space in
St. Louis
?”

 
          
Just
below, in the written report, was the answer to that:

 
          
Replying to your inquiries: Dr. Stover’s death laid to natural
causes.
He was old, overworked. One or two thought he went suddenly.
Nobody takes such theory seriously.

 
          
No
information to be had on his condensation experiments. Work said to be almost
complete.

 
          
His
grandson, Dillon Stover, has been trained to same career and is to continue
where Dr. Stover left off. Young Stover on survey trip to Mars.
Will visit Pulambar.

 
         
THERE,
Stover realized, was the motive for the murder that never was committed—his
own. Malbrook had grown rich from the monopoly of water rights on this desert
world. The condenser ray would make rain possible, spoiling the monopoly and
biting into Malbrook’s fortune, the fortune Reynardine Phogor now thought to
acquire. Malbrook, therefore, had determined to get Stover out of the way, keep
him from completing the work.

 
          
Stover
put the papers into an inside pocket, and turned off his torch. All in the dark
he drew himself to his full height.

 
          
“But
it was a double stalk, and a double plot,” he told himself once again. “While
Malbrook was after me, somebody was after him. I was nominated for the position
of convicted murderer. Now it’s gone beyond that, and I’m to be killed to keep
my mouth shut. In other words, I must be close to the solution.”

 
          
Noise in the reception hall just outside.
Then
a light, a torch like Stover’s.
It sent a searching ray into the room,
centering here and there, finally hovering at the recess Stover had opened. The
light shook, as if the hand that held it was agitated. Then it quested again,
and its circle fell upon Stover.

 
          
His
eyes filled with glare, blinding him. He heard a smothered gasp, and sprang in
that direction. An electroautomatic spoke, the pellet whining over his head.
Then he was upon the newcomer. The pistol flew one way, the radium torch
another. The battle boiled up in the dark.

 
          
Hard
fists clouted Stover on the temple and the angle of the jaw, and his own hands
were momentarily tangled in the folds of a flying cloak; but he leaned into the
storm of blows as into a hurricane, and got his arms clamped around a writhing
waist. Bringing forward a leg, he crooked it behind his adversary’s knee and
threw himself forward. His weight was not much on Mars, but it was enough. Down
they went, Stover on top.

 
          
“You
were going to rub me out, eh?’’ he taunted the writhing, flurrying shape he had
pinned down.

 
          
Only
pantings and rustling answered him. His adversary was saving every bit of
breath for the struggle. Again a fist struck Stover on the nose, jolting tears
into his eyes, but he worked his hands to a throat and fiercely tightened his
grip. Fingers tore at his wrists, but they were not strong or cunning enough to
dislodge that strangle hold. Stover felt fierce exultation flood him.

 
          
“You
tried to kill me,” he gritted. “Now I’ll kill you.”

 
          
At
that moment, more light burst from the front of the hall.

 
          
“Reynardine,”
boomed Phogor. “You slipped out alone, but I guessed you’d come here after the
will. I followed.”

 
          
As
his radium flare flooded the place with glow, Stover sprang up and back. He
gazed anxiously at his late adversary.

 
          
It
was Reynardine Phogor, rumbled and half-fainting, her hands at her throat.