"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.
CHAPTER XVI Malbrook’s Archives
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 w
ent 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 han
ds at her throat.
CHAPTER XVII The Roundup
“WHAT does this mean?” Phogor demanded, in the voice of a thunder spirit. He carried a pistol with which he threatened Stover.
Reynardine sat up. Gasping and choking, she managed to speak. “This man was hiding here, knowing that I would come, so that he could attack me.
“Knowing you would come?” echoed Stover sharply. “How would I know that? It was you who attacked me— firing with your pistol.”
“You said that the will would be hidden here,” she charged. “My stepfather knew that I would head for this place. Undoubtedly you knew the same. And it was you who attacked. I fired in self-defense.”
That last was quite true. Stover felt abashed and angry with himself. Yet he did not bring himself to apologize.
“I did not know it was you. I thought it was a man,” he explained.
“Daughter, did he hurt you?” Phogor asked. “Because if he did—”
“Careful,” broke in Reynardine, who was suddenly the calmest of the three. “His body would be a bad piece of evidence against you. Otherwise, it would give me great pleasure to see you shoot him.”
Stover was examining his sprained hand which ached after the scuffle. He hoped devoutly that he had done his last fighting for the night, at least.
“Let me explain one simple item of the business,” he attempted. “I know little or nothing about the will. When you mentioned it at your own place, I asked if it might be here. I didn’t say it was here. Indeed, I had no way of telling. Perhaps we’ve both jumped at conclusions, Miss Reynardine.”
“You are clever at explanations, Stover,” Phogor bellowed at him. His great frog-mouth was hard-set and cruel, and he glared yellowly out of his blob eyes. “I intend to escort you to the headquarters of Congreve. He will thank me for this evidence against you.”
“But,” returned Stover hastily, “he won’t fail to ask what you were doing here.”
Manly Wade Wellman - Chapbook 02 Page 10
