by Earl
The cat and mouse game—sabotage in five careful steps. . . .
Hale, only human, took a delight in planning it that way. They had five steps toward world power. He had five steps toward revenge. He must always stay one step ahead.
Peter Asquith hesitated at the door of Dr. Strato’s home. Finally he pressed the button. The door opened so suddenly that it startled him. The politely smiling face of Dr. Strato peered at him.
“Come in.” Hale felt that in effect he was saying: “Come into my parlor.”
In the living room, Asquith spoke hastily.
“My niece, Laura, mentioned your visit to her two days ago. You are from some European state?”
Hale’s faint outward smile was only a reflection of the deep grin within. The second of the Five had come to visit him! He had known it would be Peter Asquith. One was as good as another.
Looking at the bland, friendly face, it took effort to control the intense hatred that welled in his veins. This was the man who had acted as a friend to Burton Hale and Richard Hale, leading them on to treachery. This man had betrayed him heartlessly, defamed his character at the trial, and used him as a pawn.
BLINDLY, Hale wanted to leap at the man, choke him, watch him die slowly and horribly. The moment passed safely. It must be done a better way. He must suffer. He must atone, in part, for Hale’s three years of prison.
“I am a citizen of the world,” returned Hale noncommittally, in his stiff, formal accent. “If you are curious about me, I follow only one creed—humanitarianism.”
“Never mind.” Peter Asquith’s falsely frank eyes had narrowed. He leaned forward. “Sir Charles Paxton was here, and left with what we may call the Golden Touch. You gave it to him. Why?”
“It was purely an accident,” Hale retorted, drawing himself up in feigned indignation.
“There’s something queer about it all,” interrupted Asquith, watching him closely.
“But why should I want to give any one the so-called Golden Touch?” countered Hale. “Isn’t that a little ridiculous?”
“Which one hired you?” Asquith’s voice crackled suddenly. “Paxton is eliminated. It’s one of the three others!”
Hale grinned. That was Asquith to the core. An unscrupulous betrayer himself, he trusted no one else. “I don’t know what you mean,” Hale returned, enjoying the baffled look in his visitor’s face.
Quite suddenly, Asquith’s hand came out of his pocket, gripping a deadly AP-gun that could shoot out blasts of withering energy. He waved it threateningly.
“Do you understand this? Now talk, and talk fast!”
Hale backed away, as though the sight of the gun unnerved him. But his move was deliberate. He stopped with his back against the wall. His fingers found the small concealed switch along a molding. It closed quietly. With no audible or visible sign, an anesthetic ray sprayed down from a ceiling projector. Asquith was caught directly in focus.
About to repeat his demands, his mouth remained open for a soundless syllable, then drooped shut. His body, instantly asleep, swayed forward. Hale caught the limp form, keeping himself out of the ray’s range, and eased it to the floor. He placed the fallen gun aside.
Hale strode to his laboratory and returned with a small flask containing a blood-red liquid that was a powerful dye. Once applied to the skin, it would work its way down to the underlying derm. Its effect would be the same as tattooing, but without the use of needles. Moreover it would be permanent and precisely the color of blood.
HALE had achieved that peculiar shade after many attempts. The same type of dyes could be made in any color of the spectrum. Dr. Allison, exiled genius of Strato-prison, had conceived the formulae for these super-dyes, as yet unknown to industry. Though one of his lesser secrets, it was important to Hale for his present purpose.
In the next fifteen minutes, Hale was busy over Asquith’s hands. He dipped a soft-haired brush periodically in the flask of dye. At times he drew his head back, squinting his eyes, with the manner of an artist surveying his work. Finally he applied a volatile skin-colored reagent over the dye which would evaporate in an hour.
Hale looked down bitterly at the limp form.
“You can’t wash the dye off, Peter Asquith. No more than you can wash off the guilt of blood and betrayal.” Hale returned the materials. He then hauled the body erect, reaching for the anesthetic ray switch. At the moment he released it, he sprang away from Asquith, The latter sagged momentarily, then straightened, wide awake again.
“You dropped your gun,” Hale said, handing it back. “I’m a simple scientist. You have imagined things about me. I am sure after thinking it over you will agree.”
Asquith took his gun bewilderedly. Unaware of his short sleep, he was only puzzled at dropping his weapon. “Perhaps I have,” he muttered.
He left with his guileless face a little dazed.
Hale pondered deeply when he had gone. The cards had to be played right. Would the other three of the Five come to him? Or would he have to go out after them? He set his lips grimly. Either way, he would have to be careful.
“Two steps!” he breathed softly. “Three more to go!”
PETER ASQUITH left with a web of confused suspicions running through his mind. The mysterious Dr. Strato might still be the focal point of something sinister. Of the Five, Asquith trusted none but himself.
When he arrived at his apartment an hour later, he reached nervously for a cigar. His hand remained outstretched, while his eyes fastened to it. What were those dim red spots over the skin? He strode to the bathroom, to wash his hands.
At the touch of soap and water, the spots sprang out in full relief. They were distributed over both hands, palms and backs, to the wrists. They were droplet-shaped, exactly like—spattered blood!
Asquith washed for ten minutes, scrubbing thoroughly, before he realized it was useless. The stains were as bright as before. How had this been done? By Dr. Strato? But why?
Asquith stood looking at his hands. He shuddered. It was as though fresh human blood hung there on the skin, ready to drop off the ends of his fingers, Blood that could not be washed off. Vaguely in the back of his mind while washing, he had been thinking of another man who had washed his bloody hands and never got them clean. In the Bible. . . .
Asquith felt a queer tremor of intangible fear. The betrayal of innocent blood! His hands were not free of crime—ruthless crimes that he and the other four had engineered in their climb for power. They leaped starkly from his vigorously censored subconscious, where they had crawled and writhed ceaselessly.
Asquith shook himself. He mustn’t let his imagination prey on him. Looking closely, he reasoned it was some kind of dye. Dr. Strato’s work, evidently, however he had done it. Angrily, Asquith reached for the visi-phone, then changed his mind. Which one of the Five had hired him? That was the thought that bothered him most.
He sat down to smoke his cigar, but his eyes kept stealing toward his hands, no matter how hard he fought against it. They were not a pretty sight, those marked hands. When the light struck them at certain angles, blood seemed actually to drip. He could not help glancing at the floor now and then, almost expecting to see a dark pool at his feet.
When he undressed for bed, he found himself involuntarily wiping at his hands with each garment. The crimson stains shone starkly against the white bedsheet until he turned out the light. He lay in darkness thankfully, no longer tormented by the sight of his blood-dyed hands. But they hung before his mind’s eye more vividly than before, like specter hands in a nightmare.
Peter Asquith groaned. His tortured mind persisted in thinking back to what the bloody hands symbolized. Betrayal! Crime! Deeds that his conscience had thinly justified as necessary in his career. But his spotted hands—He knew he would sleep miserably.
WHEN the Five were seated, the following evening, Asquith’s narrowed eyes swung from one to the other of his companions. His mind crawled with suspicion. He had spent a bad night. His eyes were bloodshot,
his nerves jangled. It had not been restful, all during a busy day in his private office, to have a pair of bloody hands constantly before him.
Red dye, he had kept repeating to himself. But his mind lent the illusion of blood—dripping blood that no amount of washing would ever efface. It had been mental torture pyramided high by a guilty conscience.
Dr. Emanuel Gordy was speaking.
“We will not have to meet in secret like this much longer,” he observed. “After our coup, all the world will know us and obey us. Carefully as we have planned, it should be a bloodless campaign—”
Asquith jerked erect at the word “bloodless,” He sprang up, revealing his hands, turning them over before their startled eyes. It was like an ill omen. As with all humans who sought power, they were superstitious.
Asquith stood trembling.
“How did that get on your hands?” demanded Gordy.
“That’s what I want to know. How and why!” Staring from one to the other, Asquith told his story, as much as he thought relevant.
“This Dr. Strato must be investigated!” Ivan von Grenfeld pounded his fist on the table.
“First Paxton with his Golden Touch. Then Asquith with bloody hands. What does it mean?” Jonathan Mausser looked fearfully over his shoulder. Though no assassination plot had ever been uncovered against them, they knew their lives might be in danger.
Asquith was still staring around narrowly.
“Just who is this Dr. Strato?” asked Gordy.
“Don’t you know, Dr. Gordy?” Peter Asquith’s bloodshot eyes leered at him accusingly. “You’re a scientist. You know solutions too—”
Tension leaped among the five men.
“Explain yourself, Asquith!” barked Gordy angrily.
“Perhaps you have hired Dr. Strato for your own purposes.” Asquith’s voice was cold, biting. “To break down our nerves, for instance, clearing the way for yourself to take sole control when when the time comes.”
“Preposterous!” grunted von Grenfeld.
Asquith swung on him.
“Or you may be the one, von Grenfeld. We never liked each other. Or Mausser!”
“Or you yourself, Asquith!” snapped back Mausser.
Dr. Gordy held up a hand, silencing the sharp quarrel.
“Stop! This is no time for mutual suspicions. We must work together. We all need each other. With world power soon to be divided among the five of us—”
Sir Charles Paxton had sat silently all the while, staring at his golden-colored hands. Now he interrupted, with a quavering laugh.
“I wonder!” he said.
They turned on him. He looked gray, his lips pressed together as though he would say no more.
“I can’t stop it!” he whispered finally. “Gold poured into the exchange all day today. Close to forty percent of Transport stock went out of our hands. If it keeps up, the monopoly will be broken. Tomorrow or the next day!”
“Good God, then we’re ruined!” gasped von Grenfeld.
CHAPTER XIV
Step Three
GORDY looked at them all gravely.
“Our hand is being forced. That’s what it amounts to. The time has come for us to swing into action. Asquith, you get your propaganda machine ready for a blast at the World Government. Von Grenfeld, hold the Syndicate troops in readiness. We will act immediately after saving Transport.”
“What about the mystery of Dr. Strato?” Asquith asked uncertainly. “If there is some kind of plot against us, he is in it.” But Asquith’s tone still held an undertone of suspicion against his companions.
“Some outside agency is after us,” commented Jonathan Mausser worriedly. “We have been too confident that our plans were secret, and that no one would find out.”
“He had gold. I saw it,” reminded Paxton. “He must be connected with this stock exchange debacle.”
“I say arrest him!” boomed von Grenfeld. “I will go there with my men and we will make him talk!”
Dr. Emanuel Gordy was pacing up and down, his brow lined in deep thought.
“You always think of the direct, crude method, von Grenfeld,” he said witheringly. “We must act carefully. Premature exposure of ourselves is what we must guard against. Some powerful group is behind this Dr. Strato. He is a pawn. What one man would dare challenge us as openly as he has? No, we’ll get at those back of him. Von Grenfeld, you will assign several of your best plainclothes agents to watch his place. Have his every move recorded.”
“But what about the stock exchange?” cried Paxton. “I tell you by tomorrow we may lose the monopoly!”
“We’ll have to use emergency methods,” Gordy returned decisively.
He whirled on Jonathan Mausser. “Issue a decree tomorrow closing the stock exchange. Push it through, as Secretary of Law, Say the market must be investigated. Say anything, but stop the buying. It will give us time. We’ll get at the bottom of this. Gold is coming from somewhere. And as soon as we’ve traced down this Dr. Strato’s activities, we’ll know where. Von Grenfeld, use your best men. Dr. Strato must not go anywhere or do anything we fail to know about.”
WATCHING in his spy ray screen, Hale saw the conference of the Five break up. They went off in separate directions, to set in motion the powerful machinery they had built up in ten years.
Hale laughed. Dr. Gordy thought it inconceivable that one man would dare oppose them. Two years before, Hale had been a haggard, trembling wretch in a rainy forest. Now, by virtue of a dead genius’ secrets, he was a power at least equal to the Five—and the only such power in existence. Hale’s thirst for revenge was tempered by the sober thought that perhaps he alone stood defensively before a helpless world, facing the Five.
Hale reflected deeply. He must plan with infinite care now. The Five were aroused. They suspected him. The one great advantage Hale had was his spy ray. With that he knew their plans, and could keep a step ahead.
Tomorrow Transport Corporation, part of the Five’s stranglehold on Earth, would crash. That is, unless Jonathan Mausser succeeded in closing the stock exchange . . .
That made Jonathan Mausser step three.
Hale arose. Then, remembering, he strode to the darkened living room and peered out the window. He searched for several minutes before he saw the dark figure slouched against a tree, cupping a cigaret in his hands. From a side and back window, Hale saw two more watchful figures. He could not move from the house without being noticed and followed. Undoubtedly they had dark-vision opti-sets which would tell them instantly when someone moved through the dark.
But inexorably Jonathan Mausser would be number three—tonight!
Sometime after night fall, Hale stepped out of the house carrying a briefcase. Dark countryside lay all about, illuminated only by the starlight. He walked down the front path, as though unaware of the watcher who crouched nearby under a tree’s shadow. But suddenly he turned, facing around, just at the moment the man stepped to follow.
The shadower had no chance to duck back. Hale strode up to him.
“Have you a match?” he asked casually, grinning at the startled surprise in the plainclothes man’s face.
The detective fumbled awkwardly in his coat pocket. Hanging by a strap from his neck was his dark-vision opti-set, much like binoculars. They showed night scenes as clearly as in daylight, by amplifying starlight. Hale would not be safe from being followed unless they were gone.
The man held forth a lighted match finally. His other hand was still in his coat pocket, gripping a conspicuous bulge. Hale stretched out his hand. But instead of taking the match, his hand paused, its fingers wrapped around a tubular device with a flaring end.
The plainclothes man took one backward step, gave one muttered oath and half-drew his gun. All these actions stopped before completion. His mouth sagged shut, his gun dropped and his knees buckled. He fell to the ground silently, asleep.
Hale kept the hand anesthetic ray focused over the other’s head while he stooped. He took away the dark-vis
ion binoculars. Chuckling, he ran swiftly and silently down the dark path. Over his shoulder he saw the man rise, rub his eyes bewilderedly, leap erect. But then it was too dark to see any more.
And by the same token, the man could not see him, without his opti-set. By the time one of his companions answered his call, Hale would be far out of range.
Hale kept running. With the dark-vision binoculars before his eyes, he could run as though it were daylight. The scene was weird, for amplified starlight lacked blues and greens. Trees were black, the sky white, and all bits of red and yellow stood out gemlike. But everything was sharp and clear-cut. He ran swiftly.
A half mile down the deserted road he turned off into a grassy stretch. Hidden among trees was a crude hut. Inside was a powerful 16-cylindered car of tear-drop design. Hale had not been unprepared, before starting his grim game with the Five, for moments like this.
The almost-silent motor carried him down the rough road smoothly, without lights. Within fifteen minutes, Hale had lost himself in the general traffic of an elevated highway leading to New Washington. He had successfully escaped the detectives.
Now he was free to go on to step three.
Jonathan Mausser returned from his office a little after midnight.
He had prepared the necessary papers. Tomorrow he would officially sign them, shove the decree through, and close the stock exchange. New Washington would protest, but he would devise excuses. He rubbed his plump hands. It always gave him a sharp pleasure to manipulate sweeping affairs of law. It was wonderful to have power like that. Soon he would have greater power in his grasp.
He let himself into his bachelor apartment. The Five had pledged themselves to remain unmarried, so that marital affairs would not hamper them. Fanaticism, the world would have called it, but to themselves it was a belief in their higher destiny.
Hardly had he settled himself for a smoke before bedtime when the front door buzzer sounded. Wondering who his late visitor could be, Mausser snapped a switch beside the closed door. A two-way visi-screen mirrored the outside person.