by Jeff Sutton
"Bert!" Maxon's croaking call came again, more imperative this time. Kane lurched through the doorway. The psychologist was lying on his back, blood flecking his lips. An ugly dark splotch stained his white shirt several inches below the left collarbone.
"Take it easy." Kane's voice came hoarsely in the quiet room. He clutched his shoulder, then looked at his hand; it was dripping blood. "I'll get help."
"No, no." Maxon tried to raise himself to a sitting position, then fell back. "There's no time. I'm done for; I know it. You've got to listen; it was Androki's men."
"I know that," Kane rasped harshly. He knelt by the psychologist's side, for a moment fearful that he was about to faint. The room went around and around. He shook his head to clear it.
"He's not a downthrough," Maxon gasped. A convulsion ran through his body and he grimaced with pain. He contorted his blood-flecked lips and shouted, "Somebody's got to kill him!"
"I'll get help." Kane struggled to his feet.
"No, listen." Maxon's eyes were pleading.
"Hurry then," he instructed tersely.
"He's, he's…" Maxon's body convulsed again and bright red blood bubbled from his lips. A strangling sound came from his throat. He tossed his head wildly as if to clear it. "Wrong direction," he gasped.
"Don't fight," Kane urged.
"Have to—" Maxon's eyes burned brightly. "Look… look the other way." A shudder ran through his thin frame. His lips opened and closed as he fought to speak. He stiffened, gasping. The strangling sound became a harsh whistling in his throat as a new gush of blood flooded his lips. Then he fell back.
"Gordie, Gordie," Kane called desperately. "You've got to hang on." Even as he spoke he saw the glazed look clouding the dark eyes; all at once they were empty of life.
Footsteps pounded up the stairs and he rose, turning as a police officer burst into the room. Staggering, he clutched at his shoulder, trying to keep from falling. "You came too late," he whispered. He felt a great sorrow. "Dr. Gordon Maxon is dead."
Kane awoke, staring at the white walls and ceiling. A faintly antiseptic odor filled his nostrils. A haunting familiarity filled his mind; then it all came back to him.'
The doctors, the nurses, the white overhead lamp glaring down into his eyes. The police—the interrogations when they must have thought he was going to die. Gordon Maxon … dead. He felt a pang of sorrow. Gordie was gone. How long ago had that been? Yesterday, or the day before. No, it was longer; he wasn't certain how long. The Government agent Conrad had been there, too; woozy at the time, Kane had heard the doctor shoo him away.
He grappled with his thoughts. There had been a gun-fight outside of Maxon's apartment. Several men had been killed. Then the police had rushed to Maxon's apartment. Too late, too late. The knowledge floated dreamlike through his mind. Anita dead, Maxon dead, his own narrow brush with death—it all seemed so long ago. Cantrup, Freyhoff, Bernardi, Wygant… all dead. Yet deep in his mind a spark was vitally alive, pushing against his consciousness.
Then he remembered.
He had awakened during the night, Maxon's words filling his mind. "He's not a downthrough!" That was the thing the psychologist had learned. "Look… look the other way," the dying man had urged.
Kane, alone in the dark hospital room, had looked the other way. Suddenly he knew what Maxon had known; the knowledge came with startling clarity. It came, revealing the source of Androki's prophecy, his power, his need to kill. It explained Cantrup's death, Freyhoff's—the whole line of murder right down to the instant the hired killer had walked through Maxon's door. And it explained the thing that Androki feared most.
"Somebody's got to kill him!" Maxon had said. Kane weighed the thought against the knowledge that nothing was provable against the financier insofar as murder was concerned. He was a man who hired agents who hired agents who hired agents ad infinitum until he himself was far removed from any possible consequences of his acts. His killers came from the scum of the underworld.
Kane set his face woodenly. Androki had surrounded himself with bodyguards. If the police couldn't touch him, neither could a hired killer, let alone a rank amateur. Once he moved into the big estate at Malibu, it would be all but impossible to reach him.
Yet Androki had made one big mistake. Perhaps he had realized it, but by then it was too late. Now he was startlingly vulnerable; that was the other thing that had come to Kane in the lonely silence of the night. Androki could hide in a fortress crawling with guards. He could protect his grounds with watch towers and electronic devices and trained -dogs; but he couldn't erase his vulnerability. John Androki could be killed—had to be killed. Too much was at stake for such a man to be allowed to live. The Bornji transformations. The future. John Androki had to die.
The resolve was cold in Kane's mind.
A nurse bustled in, smiling when she saw that he was awake. "Feeling better?"
"Hungry," he confessed.
"You're off liquids as of this morning." She fussed with his bed.
"How long have I been here?"
"Five days."
"Five?" He stared wonderingly at her.
"I'll bring your breakfast."
"Any chance for a morning paper?" he asked hopefully. She smiled cheerfully and brought him one. As he spread it out alongside his tray, the black headlines leaped to meet his eyes: senator blaire murdered!
He stared at the black type, then read the story hurriedly. The lawmaker had been killed by a bomb planted in his car. A full-scale investigation was under way. John Androki, he thought bitterly. He pushed the paper numbly aside.
After a while he dozed, a restless, form-filled sleep in which a kaleidoscope of faces and events stormed through his mind. Anita's white Jag hurtling off the highway, great gouts of blood gushing from Maxon's lips, men popping up from green lawns like so many jack-in-the-boxes, a runty killer facing him with a blazing gun—the grotesque phantasmagoria of the past reeled through his mind again and again, like the rerun of an ancient motion picture melodrama.
Later the nurse reappeared. "How do you feel?"
"Fit as a fiddle," he answered. "When can I leave?"
"When the doctor says you can. Do you feel up to a visitor?"
"Who?" he asked hopefully.
"A Mr. Conrad."
"I talked with him once," he answered irritably. The dim memory of the interrogation flooded his mind. "Won't he go away?"
"If he does, he'll be back."
- "Show him in," he said resignedly. She left the room, returning a moment later with the agent.
"You have just five minutes," she warned.
"We'll try to keep it short," Conrad assented'. He watched her leave, then turned toward the bed. "How do you feel, Dr. Kane?"
"A bit on the weak side," he admitted.
"You had a close call." The agent dragged a chair next to the bed and sat. "Allow me to extend my sympathies. Dr. Maxon's death was a great loss."
"Thank you," Kane replied. "Gordon Maxon was a fine man."
"Would you care to talk about it?" Glimpsing the swift disapproval in Kane's face, he quickly added, "I know you've given a statement to the police but I'd still like to ask a few questions."
"What good will they do?" asked Kane wearily.
"They might help speed justice."
"Justice?"
"It has a way of working out, Dr. Kane."
"What is it you wished to know?"
"I understand you arrived at Dr. Maxon's apartment a few seconds after he was shot." Conrad made it a statement.
Kane nodded. "Someone took several shots at me down below and I was anxious to get under cover. As I remember, I was still in the lower hall when I heard the shots upstairs. They sounded muffled."
"The gun had a silencer," Conrad observed. "So did the weapons used outside. Do you know of any reason why anyone would want to kill you?"
"I assume it was because I walked in at the wrong time," he answered. "They probably were trying to keep me from spreadin
g an alarm."
"Possibly." The agent nodded. "When did you first suspect that Maxon was in danger?"
"I'm not certain." Kane searched his mind. "When I heard the thup, thup from upstairs, I realized it was the same sound as when the bullets were fired at me. My thoughts certainly weren't coherent but I had a horrible foreboding; I recall that quite clearly."
He related his discovery of the intruder in the psychologist's apartment and the events that followed.
"You're fortunate to be here," Conrad observed, when he had finished. "Do you know of any reason why anyone would want to murder Dr. Maxon?"
"None whatever," he answered shortly.
"How did it happen that you arrived there at such a late hour?"
"Maxon called me a short time before, asked me to drop over."
"Did he say why?"
"We were working on a mutual problem."
"May I ask what?"
Kane hesitated. He was willing to talk, up to a limit, but he couldn't risk giving information which, through a subsequent investigation, might alert Androki to the area of his vulnerability. He finally said, "It was a mathematical and philosophical problem relating to multidimensional space."
Conrad smiled wryly. "And he called you at midnight to discuss that?"
Kane flushed. "Is that unusual?"
"Perhaps, I wouldn't know." Conrad surveyed him coolly. "I understand Dr. Maxon was still alive when you found him."
"Barely," he acknowledged.
"Did he say anything?"
"He said, I'm done for, I know it.' He knew that he'd been hit pretty hard."
"Why would he say that?"
"I'd told him to lie still; I was going to call an ambulance."
"But he had something he wanted to say, was that it?"
"Possibly, I don't know," Kane answered tonelessly. "Those were his last words."
"Nothing else?" The question held disbelief.
"Nothing," he replied flatly.
"It seems strange that Dr. Maxon wouldn't have wondered at the identity of his assailant or the purpose of the assault." Conrad's eyes were expressionless. "Unless, of course, he knew."
Kane returned his gaze. The observation was a leading one designed to draw him out; at the same time it told him that Conrad knew far more about the murder than he had first suspected. He said calmly, "I can't answer that."
"Can't or won't?"
"Take your choice," he answered indifferently.
"I understand you were both friends with Anita Weber."
"She was a colleague," he snapped.
"Didn't she work for the financier, John Androki?"
"You apparently know that. What has she to do with this?"
"Perhaps nothing, perhaps everything."
"Would you mind explaining that?"
"It's a point that I'm trying to determine," Conrad answered. "Why did she visit you the night preceding her death?"
Kane tried to conceal his surprise. "That's a personal matter," he replied shortly.
"Murder is never a personal matter, Dr. Kane." Conrad smiled slightly. "Her death was murder, you know."
"I assumed that from the news stories, but it had nothing to do with her visit."
"Didn't she come to you for advice because she was in fear?"
"Who told you that?" he asked sharply.
"We have pipelines."
Kane hesitated, wondering just how much the agent did know. He finally said, "She came for advice, yes."
"Because of her fear?"
"I'm not on the witness stand," he retorted.
"I'm aware of that, Dr. Kane." Conrad's dark eyes scrutinized him. "Believe me, my sole interest is in seeing that justice is done."
"That is also my interest."
"Yet we seem to be talking at odds," Conrad rejoined.
"Perhaps."
"I can draw some conclusions. Would you care to hear them?" Conrad eyed him speculatively before continuing. "I believe that Anita Weber had obtained information dangerous to her, and that she realized it. I also believe she realized the source of the danger, just as later you knew it and Dr. Maxon knew it. I believe that is why she sought your advice that night." He paused watchfully.
"Go on," Kane said.
"Apparently she was indecisive in the matter, an indecision that undoubtedly caused her death. I also believe that Dr. Maxon deduced the identity of her killer. That was the reason he called you that night. Am I right, Dr. Kane?"
"And if you are?"
"That question is in itself a statement that I'm right," Conrad answered. "But what I need is information that will prove the identity of the killer. I'm referring, of course, to the man behind the plot."
"I'm surprised you don't know," Kane replied acidly. "You seem to know so much."
Conrad shook his head. "Not nearly enough."
"Isn't that the job of the local police?"
"Yes, of course." Conrad eyed him steadily.
"Then what is your interest?"
A smile touched the agent's lips. "The ramifications are possibly more than local."
"In what way?"
"I'm not at liberty to say." Conrad hesitated. "I'm walking in the field of surmise."
"Aren't we all?"
"Some truths are becoming visible, Dr. Kane." Conrad's voice became brisk. "Now about Anita Weber…"
"I have no more to say."
"About Anita Weber?"
"About anything."
"Tell me this, was my surmise right?"
"I can't say," Kane answered shortly.
"I believe it was."
"That's your privilege."
"You've been a great help, Dr. Kane." Conrad rose, looking down at him. "If there is anything at all you'd like to say off the record, I'd respect your confidence."
"There's nothing," he answered stonily.
Watching the agent depart, he wondered at the source of Conrad's knowledge. The agent certainly knew far more of the story than he'd indicated. Perhaps all of it—except the real reason that drove Androki to murder; he couldn't know that.
How had he learned of Anita's visit? He could have tailed her, of course, but that didn't explain his knowledge of the reason for her visit. Neither did it explain how he had so correctly deduced Maxon's role. No one could have known that unless, unless…
His phone had been tapped! The thought, startling at first, flared to conviction in his mind. A tapped phone! No doubt his apartment was bugged! That had to be it! There was no other way Conrad could have gotten the information. That also explained how the police had come upon the scene so soon after the shootings. It explained a lot of things.
His startlement gave way to a wry smile. If his surmise was true, then the entire interrogation had been a farce; Conrad had already known the answers. What, then, was he after? The knowledge locked in Maxon's mind at the moment of his death, Kane thought. Then Conrad's quest was far greater than the quest for proof of Androki's guilt. He was digging at the very foundations of Androki's existence. He was searching, perhaps blindly, for knowledge known but to two men in the entire world. One man was John Androki. The second was himself.
He contemplated that thought soberly. Anita had been murdered because of what she had seen; Maxon had been murdered because of what he had deduced. And himself.
No doubt he was at the top of John Androki's list. One thing was certain: this world no longer was big enough for them both.
He pushed the cover? aside and slipped from bed, surprised at his weakness. He waited until the dizziness .passed, then walked quietly to the door and peered out. He wasn't surprised at sight of a police officer sitting in a position in which he could scan the corridor in both directions. Bertram Kane's bodyguard! He had to laugh. That was quite something for a professor of mathematics.
Returning to bed, he stared thoughtfully at the ceiling. It wasn't his life but the future that counted. Androki was fighting to destroy that future while he captured the world with his dollars. He was att
empting to twist and distort' tomorrow; and he was desperate because tomorrow was fighting back. That was the thing Gordon Maxon had deduced.
And it was true. Kane knew it because he had looked the other way. He had looked last night in the blackness of the room; and when he had, all of the pieces had fallen into place. Coldly, incisively, he knew what he had to do. He had to fight John Androki with his own weapon.
Murder!
The message from Philip Conrad was eleven days old—the length of time that Bertram Kane had been missing. Two days before then, the mathematician had flown to Chicago to deliver the keynote address at a convention of his colleagues. Thereafter, managing to elude the agent Conrad had placed on .his tail, he had vanished.
Now, sitting in his office, Dorrance contemplated that last word thoughtfully. Kane had gone through the motions of catching a personal flight to New York to attend business, then had slipped off in another direction. To where?- That was what Dorrance had not yet been able to discover.
He absently studied the message.
Conrad was convinced that Bertram Kane knew the -full story behind the murders of Anita Weber and Gordon Maxon. If that was true, then Kane undoubtedly knew enough to untangle the whole web of murder. Enough to hang John Androki, he reflected grimly.
As Conrad saw it, Anita Weber had also discovered John Androki's secret. She had discovered it, and had died. So had Gordon Maxon. Or at least Maxon had deduced the secret; his tapped telephone conversation with Kane had made that clear. It also was a conversation which, heard by whoever had been manning Androki's listening post to Kane's apartment, had spelled the psychologist's immediate death. Conrad hadn't been able to alert the local police in time to prevent that.
But Bertram Kane hadn't known the secret at the time of Maxon's call. His possession of it now meant that he must have gotten it from Maxon as the latter lay dying. Kane knew.
But Bertram Kane wouldn't talk!
Dorrance felt a flash of annoyance. Kane's silence made him a big fat pigeon. Formerly Conrad had been willing to dangle Kane as bait, but not now! The mathematician's knowledge was too precious to be lost. He, and he alone, knew the secret of John Androki.
Where was Bertram Kane?
Dorrance suppressed his frustration. The agent Conrad had assigned to tail Kane when he'd left the hospital had provided slender safety; now that safety was gone. Bertam Kane,, a man who carried a secret that had already cost thirteen lives, was a walking target. Fourteen lives, if Vosin's death had been murder. Fifteen, if he counted Senator Blaire. And he did count the senator.