“He’s putting on an act,” accused Gerda, and Buckalew waved '7bor her to keep quiet.
Stover had cooled down a trifle, telling himself that the mere mention of rivalry over Bee MacGowan must not be enough to drive him so crazy with wrath. He saw that Crofts wore a bracelet like his. This man, too, would be kept in Pulambar by Congreve for possible further investigation. Let him go, decided Stover, and keep an eye on him.
“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.
CHAPTER XII Fight and Fall
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.
CHAPTER XIII Half a Key
FORTY feet below the girder, two cables forked from a common mooring, making a narrow, spring- armed V. Into the angle of that V Dillon Stover had fallen. Even on light-gravitied Mars it was a heavy tumble and the impact of Stover’s body made the two cables snap apart, then back. He was caught at the waist like a frog caught in the beak of a stork.
Lying thus horizontally, feet kicking and head dangling, Stover wondered whether to be thankful or not. He seized the cables and tried to push them apart, but they were tough and tight-squeezing, and his right hand had sprained itself by striking that veiled metal mask. He relaxed, saving strength. As he did so there was the snarling snick of an MS-ray cutting through the air close to him.
He looked up. The draped figure knelt on the girder and levelled the ray thrower at one of the cables. The metal sizzled. Stover's pinched abdomen felt the cable vibrate.. Still chary of marking Stover with a telltale wound, the killer above was trying to cut the metal strand that held him and set him falling again.
“I wish you luck!” the young man called, and his swaddled destroyer made a salute-gesture of irony with the ray thrower. Then came a new sound, a whistling, shrieking siren.
Stover looked outward. A plane, a taxi flyer, was hovering and bobbing just beyond the scaffolding. Somehow the drama on the girders had attracted attention. Another plane came, another. The ray above him was shut off.
Stover, cramped and half suffocated, gestured to the pilots of the machines. Pointing to the scissorslike cables that imprisoned him, he spread his hands in appeal for help. One of the planes made a wriggling motion in midair to indicate understanding. But no one seemed to know how to reach and free him.
Stover groaned despite himself. Then, once more a voice from the girder forty feet overhead.
'‘Dillon, hold tight! I’m going to get you out of that.”
It was Buckalew, running along the narrow footpath like a cat on a fence- top. One of his hands flourished a velvet rope.
Stover tried to call back but he had no breath to do more than wheeze and gasp. Buckalew was lowering the rope. It dangled against Stover’s hand, and he seized it.
Now he would be pulled up. All the way? Or would Buckalew let him fall, seemingly by accident? Had Buckalew clambered down out of the tower, or had he merely thrown off the gray disguisings? No time to speculate now. Stover caught the velvet strand. It tightened.
But he was too closely crimped, and one of his hands was injured. The first tug wrenched the rope from him, and Buckalew almost fell with the sudden slackening of the cord.
More sirens. The air around the scaffolding was thick with planes. Drivers and passengers were sympathetic and most unhelpful.
“Chin up, Dillon!” Buckalew yelled above the racket. “I’ll try something else.”
He rove a noose in the rope’s end. This he lowered and snared one of Stover’s waving feet. Then he began to pull. Stover shifted in the clutch of his trap, but could not be dragged free.
BUCKALEW sprang backward into space.
He kept hold of the rope, which tightened abruptly across the girder. The sudden application of his hurled weight did the trick. With a final cruel pinch that all but buckled Stover’s ribs, the cables released their hold. Then Stover was being drawn up by one foot, his head downward. Buckalew came slowly down at the other end of the rope. The smaller man was strangely the heavier. Drawing to a point opposite Stover, Buckalew caught his friend by the arm.
“Steady on,” he bade, twisting the two strands of the line together.
Then, thankfully and triumphantly, Stover and Buckalew climbed hand over hand up the doubled length of velvet. A few moments of rest on the girder, and they walked back along it to where another length of cord gave them a passage back to their own balcony.
To the thronging plane-riders who now closed in, Buckalew had a brief word of dismissal.
“Did you like the show? We’re rehearsing an acrobatic turn for next year’s society circus on Venus. Not very good yet, are we?”
Then he closed the d
oor behind him. He brought the exhausted Stover a drink, and listened to all that had happened below the floor.
“You say that the disguised one was as tall as you?” he asked at the end of the story.
“Yes, with those false magnetic soles,” replied Stover. “He’d have to be built up to be that big. All my suspects are shorter than I am.” He measured Buckalew’s middling height with his eye as he spoke.
“Why say ‘he’?” asked Buckalew. “Couldn’t it be a woman, with that whisper, the stilts and draperies. Reynardine Phogor?”
“She might be a killer,” admitted Stover. “You seem to think so.”
“I didn’t say that. I only want her to be remembered. Don’t drop any suspects from the list without very good reasons.”
“But where could that murderer have popped from?” elaborated Stover. “The whole scaffolding’s open-work. Not place enough to hide even a small person. Yet I turned around and there he—or she—was.” “You said the draperies were gray,” reminded Buckalew. “A good color to blend in with the metal. Probably the murderer crouched motionless while you walked right past.”
Stover shook his head and rubbed his bruised side gently. “I find that pretty hard to accept, on a ten-inch girder.”
“You weren’t looking for a human figure,” persisted Buckalew. “You were looking for clues—by the way, did you find any?”
Stover’s hand crept into the pocket of his tunic. His finger touched the scrap of elascoid. Perhaps Buckalew could help him decide exactly what it was. Perhaps, again, Buckalew knew only too well what it was.
“No,” he said. “Nothing at all.” Then his eyes had time to quarter the room, and he jumped up quickly.
“Look! Gerda—her body! It’s gone!”
And it was.
THE high-tower set was holding carnival at the Zaarr. The place was packed, nearly every seat and table taken. There was lots of music, and Venusian dancers—frog-women who, grotesque as they were, had yet the grace of snakes. To keep them supple and energetic, a misty spray of water played over the glass stage, water that might cool the parched and dehydrated tissues of many a Martian pauper out on the deserts far away.
Manly Wade Wellman - Chapbook 02 Page 8