“Then you didn’t run up that pennant?” Earl asked.
Whalen shook his head. “I don’t know anything about it.”
“And the killings?”
“Nothing, But it sure made me want to get away from here as soon as I could!”
“What do you think?” Tony Cooper asked the others. “Do we believe him?”
“I don’t!” Vera said firmly. “Someone killed them and he’s the most likely. Did you see his face when he used that sharkstick on Earl?”
“The decision is yours,” Hobbes told Earl. “You’re the closest thing we have to a law enforcement officer here.”
“Lock him up,” Earl decided. “In his room. Make sure the window’s somehow locked too so he can’t get out that way.”
“It’s not necessary—,” Whalen began.
“It’s necessary.”
While Tony and Hobbes led their prisoner upstairs Dr. Armstrong said, “I’d better check on my patient. With all this excitement, I’ve nearly forgotten about him.”
Earl glanced around and saw that only Vera remained. “I’m glad you weren’t hurt,” she said, coming closer. “I wouldn’t have liked that!”
“Neither would I.”
“Do you want to come up to my room?”
“What would Tony say?”
“He doesn’t have to know.”
Earl nodded. He picked up the shaker of unfinished martinis and two cocktail glasses. “What are we waiting for?”
NINE
IT WAS THE FIRST time he’d been inside her bedroom, and he was surprised at the room’s feminine touches—the ruffled curtains and flowered vinyl wallcovering together with a fancy bedspread in electric pink. “This is pretty nice,” he commented. “You saw my room—it’s decorated in monk’s-cell modern.”
“I was surprised at this myself. Do you think he had a wife here once, or a girl friend?”
“Who knows?” Earl poured them both a drink. “At least you’ve got a better view than I do. You can see the water from here.”
She sipped the martini and smiled. “Who wants to look at the view?” Her hand moved to the cord and pulled shut the blinds.
“You know something?”
“What?”
“I saw you coming out of the kitchen just a little while before I found Hilda dead there. It just came back to me now.”
“A butcher knife isn’t among my favorite weapons.”
“Was she alive when you left the kitchen?”
“She wasn’t even there!”
“Then the killer had to act awfully fast. There was only about a ten-minute gap between your leaving the kitchen and my entering it. Less than ten minutes, probably.”
“It doesn’t take much time to stick somebody with a butcher knife.”
“No, but it calls for careful planning.”
“Maybe he was just looking for his next victim. She was there, so he killed her.” She took out a cigarette.
“You know something else about your room I just noticed?”
“What’s that?”
“You’ve got a table coil. All the rooms have them. It wasn’t necessary to come to my room in search of a light.”
She ran her cool, gentle fingers inside his shirt. “Maybe I was looking for something else.”
“Maybe you were.”
He tried to pull her gently backward onto the bed but she resisted. “Wait a minute. I’ll be right back. Take off your clothes meanwhile.”
He watched her disappear into the bathroom, then started slipping off his pants. The thought crossed his mind that perhaps she’d lied about Hilda not being in the kitchen. Perhaps he was about to make love to a four-time murderess. But that was a gamble he was more than willing to take.
He finished undressing and slipped beneath the covers of the bed, feeling just a bit like a bashful maiden on her wedding night. He was not used to a brightly lit room, so he reached over to turn off the bedside lamp, cutting down the glare a little.
When she returned to the room she was nude, and she carried a wide leather belt that looked about six feet long. “Do you beat me with that?” he asked with a grin.
“Get out of bed while I put this on.”
“I guess I should tell you I like my sex straight.”
“So do I. That’s why I use the belt.” She stepped very close to him until their naked bodies were touching. Then she slid the wide loop of leather around both their waists, snapping the ends shut with a click. “It has a trick lock that you can’t open,” she explained. “We’re belted together until I decide to free us.”
“I—I’m not used to this confinement.”
She grinned up at him, her face only inches away. “Once you get used to it I think you’ll enjoy it. Tony does.” Without warning she lurched to one side, tumbling them both onto the bed. “And this way I’m sure you won’t go running off if any shooting starts.”
At first he found the closeness of her body, the inability to pull himself away, something of a problem. But as she started working on him he realized that the very nature of the dual bondage acted as a powerful but subtle aphrodisiac.
“That’s it,” she encouraged, breathing very close to his ear. “That’s the way.”
“Did you get this out of the latest sex manual?”
“Nope—thought it all up myself! Maybe I should write a manual, huh?”
“Maybe,” he gasped, the word exploding out of him with the final frenzy of their love-making.
For a moment they simply lay there together, joined by the rhythm of their breathing as surely as by the belt. “You’re pretty good,” she offered at last.
“You’re not bad yourself. What would Tony do if he found us like this?”
“I don’t know what he’d do to me. But he’d kill you.”
“Great!”
“Don’t worry. I locked the door.”
When finally she worked the lock to open it, and release him he felt totally drained of passion. He sat cross-legged on the bed and watched her light a cigarette. “You know, we’re crazy—doing this while people are being killed all around us.”
“What better time to do it?”
“Don’t you feel a bit sorry about Freddy’s death, at least? He was your lover at one time.”
She brushed the long hair back from her eyes. “People come and go in my life. Freddy was a phase. After the way he behaved here this week, I can’t really say his death had me in tears.”
He poured the rest of the martinis into their glasses. “What do you think about the killings? Is Frank getting up off that table and lurching around the house hacking people up?”
“God, I’d hate to think so! I think I’d really be frightened then. The way it is, I figure old Hobbes is doing it. He wanted MacKenzie and Freddy out of the way so he’d get full credit for the operation. Since I was only a nurse, he’s got no reason to kill me.”
“But where do Hilda and Miss Watson fit in to your theory?”
She simply shrugged. “He killed Emily for her money. Hilda probably saw something that incriminated him, so he killed her too.”
“You’ve got an answer for everything.” He finished the cocktail and started to dress. “Do you believe all that?”
“I believe it enough so I won’t turn my back on old Hobbes.” She got off the bed and picked up the belt from the floor.
“I’d better be getting back before Tony comes looking for us.”
She nodded, brushing her lips against his. “Next time I’ve got another little trick I’ll show you.”
“I can hardly wait.”
He went back to his own room for a quick shower, feeling somehow that the very odor of her passion might reveal itself to Tony Cooper. Then he went downstairs and found Hobbes playing a lackluster game of laser with Dr. Armstrong.
“Where’s Tony?” he asked casually.
“Outside somewhere,” Hobbes answered. “He wandered off.”
Earl went in search of him. He didn’t l
ike anyone wandering off, even though Whalen was locked in his room and Frank was still sleeping downstairs. There were too few of them left now to take any risks. And sooner or later someone else might have to make the boat journey across to the mainland.
But Tony Cooper was nowhere to be seen. The beach was deserted, with the speedboat rolled back along its track to the boathouse.
Earl stood for a moment, wondering where to try next. The gulf breeze against his face was still strong, but the whitecaps on the water seemed to be dying down. A calm might come with dusk, as Hobbes had indicated earlier. He walked back to the house and went downstairs.
Cooper was in the operating amphitheater, bent over the sleeping body of Frank. He glanced up as Earl entered and said, “I can’t figure out how he goes on sleeping like this. It’s over sixty hours now.”
“Beginning to look like brain damage?”
“Maybe. That might be what Freddy was investigating when he was killed. But I can’t read these brain waves worth a damn.”
There was something about the placid face of the sleeping young man that drew Earl forward. Even with layers of bandages hiding the bald skull where the new brain had been inserted, it was still a handsome face. He wondered what life had been like for the young man back in the 1970s. Reaching out, he touched a finger to the bare skin of the arm and was surprised at its warmth.
“He’s really alive,” Earl said, as if grasping that fact for the first time.
“Sure. You saw him move, didn’t you?”
“Do you ever think about what you’ve done here, Tony?”
“I think about the money Hobbes is paying me. I think about maybe being interviewed on the telenews.”
“I mean, do you ever consider the moral factors?”
“You think he’s goin’ to wake up and tell us what it’s been like in heaven these past three decades?”
“That’s not exactly what I meant.”
“I guess I’m not a moral man,” Tony said lightly.
The door at the rear of the amphitheater suddenly flew open and Armstrong came running in, his dark hair disheveled and his eyes wild. “Come quick! Whalen knocked me down and got loose!”
They ran up the steps after him, and when they were back on the main floor they found Vera and Hobbes equally disturbed. “What happened?” Earl asked.
Armstrong was gasping for breath. “I took him some food. When I opened the door he was hiding behind it. He slugged me and got away.”
“Where?”
“Who knows? We’ve got to search!”
Hobbes walked to another of his locked cabinets that lined one side of the living room. “I’m getting out my laser pistol. That man is dangerous!”
“So’s a laser,” Earl said, placing a restraining hand on his arm. “Let’s take the sharksticks instead.”
They headed for the beach as the most likely place, Tony in the lead. As they burst out of the trees and onto the sandy shoreline Earl saw that they were just a few minutes too late. Phil Whalen had the speedboat in the water, revving it up about twenty feet from shore.
“Whalen!” Hobbes shouted. “Come back!”
The motor coughed into life, sputtered a bit, then began to hum. Phil Whalen glanced back with a disparaging wave and gunned the craft away from the island.
“That’s the last we’ll see of him,” Tony predicted.
“At least he didn’t get the files and that film.” Hobbes watched the boat disappear from sight around the bend of the island and then turned away. “Let’s go back.”
Earl had walked up to the boathouse and was peering inside. “You’ve got enough room here for two boats.”
“Yes.”
“Ever have two?”
“Not in recent years. Why do you ask?”
“I was thinking maybe Emily Watson didn’t die. Maybe she just took off in one of your boats.”
“Impossible! There wasn’t another boat, and if there were she certainly couldn’t have operated it. These super inboards are like piloting a jet plane.”
“Whalen didn’t seem to be having any trouble.”
“He’d taken it out a few times in the past months. He was familiar with it.”
“So that leaves just five of us,” Vera said.
“Six,” Hobbes corrected. “You’re forgetting our patient.”
“I’m not forgetting him. I’ll count him when he wakes up and starts talking to me.”
Tony chuckled. “Maybe he won’t talk to you, Vera. Maybe Frank is queer or something. That would be a nice twist, wouldn’t it? A queer monster!”
“He’s not a monster!” Hobbes exploded. “My God, man—he’s a human being just like us! Don’t you understand that? I’m not creating monsters here! This is no Frankenstein factory, despite what that O’Connor said!”
“Calm down, will you? I was just kidding. I should think we could all use a little kidding.”
“We could all use something!” Armstrong agreed. “That boat was our last hope of communicating with the mainland.”
“Oh, come now! It’s not as bad as all that!” Hobbes insisted. “We can always start a signal fire on the beach. That would bring help from the mainland quickly enough.”
Vera embraced the idea with enthusiasm. “Let’s do it! What are we waiting for?”
Lawrence Hobbes merely stared at her. “For our patient to awaken, my dear young lady. Have you forgotten the reason why you’re here?”
“Well, I’m sure not here to get myself killed! Start the fire!”
“All in due time.”
“What do we do till then?”
Hobbes glanced at the glowing digits on his wristcase. “In view of the time, I’d suggest we have something to eat. We’ll have to prepare it ourselves, now that Hilda has … left my employ.”
That evening the darkness seemed to settle over the island with a suddenness Earl had experienced before in the tropics. He longed for the lingering twilight of New England autumns, but he knew he wouldn’t be seeing them again right away. He’d grown up in New England, south of Boston, and the area would always be home to him. When he heard congressmen talk of a Venus colony to be made up of criminals from Earth he always remembered that New England had been settled in much the same way. The criminals and outcasts, the refugees from religious persecution, the adventurers who knew no law—they were the ones who’d crossed an ocean, while the best people stayed at home. Would it be the same in space? He thought, staring up now at the sky, that perhaps it would be.
“What are you thinking?” Vera asked, coming out the front door to stand at his side.
“Just how quickly the night falls around here, and how quickly the future sneaks up on us. Things move so fast these days. Men like MacKenzie went to the moon, and came back home to be forgotten. Now they talk of Venus colonies, and searails to span the oceans, and bringing people back from the dead.”
“Some say life moves too fast. They say the end of the world is near.”
“Men have always said that. It didn’t end in the year 2000, like everyone expected.”
“Does that mean we have another thousand years?”
“What would we do with it?”
They strolled along the path to the beach, under a rising moon that cast its glow of silver before them. “I don’t know,” Vera admitted, staring out at the sea.
“I don’t even know why in hell people get themselves frozen when they die. Isn’t one lifetime enough for them?”
“It’s not enough for most people. They all want to know what’s going to happen after they’re gone. Just natural curiosity, I guess.”
“In China and India the governments are encouraging suicide among the elderly. They say some Latin American countries may soon do it too.”
“And in America and Russia the governments prepare to ship the surplus people to Venus. Is there any difference?”
“Not much,” Earl admitted. “But I think the Venus colony is still a good many years away. There are a great
many environmental problems to overcome first. For one thing, the entire colony would have to live under a giant dome—or else wear spacesuits at all times.”
“They say the Russians and the Chinese are working on plans for a joint colony.”
“If so, it’ll be the first thing they ever worked on together.”
They were following the beach along its gentle curve, coming around to the back side of the horseshoe. Vera turned her eyes toward the sky and he saw in her moonlit face the age-old wonderment. “To think there could be so many stars in the sky!”
“At least you can see them out here. Back in New York nobody’s seen a star in my lifetime. The lights are too bright and the haze is too thick, even with the ozone spray.”
“That’s a shame.”
“It is,” he agreed. “My father told me once that when he was a boy there was some sort of Buck Rogers fan club he belonged to. One of the things he had to do to qualify for a merit badge was to go into his backyard, look through an opening in a piece of cardboard, and count the number of stars he saw in the sky. The number was sent in to national headquarters, where they could check to make certain no alien spaceships were entering our solar system disguised as stars. He told me he counted a hundred nineteen stars, and they sent him a badge.”
“Remember when people used to see flying saucers? Do you think they were all out in their backyards counting stars?”
“I think they—” He paused, staring through the night at something bobbing in the water straight ahead. “Can you see what that is, Vera?”
“A boat of some sort?”
“A boat means someone else is on the island!”
They hurried forward, not quite knowing what to expect. When they were about twenty feet from the craft, as it bobbed offshore in the surf, Vera said, “It looks like the speedboat Whalen used for his escape!”
“It does indeed. Keep back, behind me.”
Earl slipped off his shoes and socks and waded out the few feet to where the boat rested. He gripped the edges of it to steady the rocking, then peered inside.
“What is it?” Vera asked from the shore.
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