“He’s what? How do you know?”
“A sniper got him, just a few minutes ago.”
“Paul, this can’t be!”
“It is.”
“But how did that happen? How did they catch him? Peter is a careful man.”
“Peter was a careful man. They came looking for him. They knew where he was and routed him out.”
XIII.
1950
She was a blonde, natural blonde of a rather dark shade and not at all the glossy canescence that is so painfully artificial. He liked that and held his lips close to her hair. She still wore the bronzed tan which complemented so well the coloring of her hair and eyes but now the tan was faded from the long winter. She rested her head on his shoulder in a dispirited manner, no longer the sparkling, animated woman he had first known so many years before. Karen was deeply troubled. They sat alone in the basement gymnasium, she in his arms.
Her gaze moved slowly about the huge room, seeking this object or that, seeking the pleasant memories that had been.
“Remember when we batted that silly ball around, Paul? The four of us?”
“Peter batted it too hard. He knocked Emily down.”
“One by one they have all gone, haven’t they? The friends we loved so well.”
He nodded against her head without speaking.
“Poor Peter—I shall never forget that first night I met you. He opened the door and saw me standing there. He was very surprised and almost made a rude remark. I think he would have, too, if Emily hadn’t been with me.”
Paul tightened his arms about her. “You were the last woman on earth he was expecting that night. It probably cured him of blind dates.”
“We lost Peter first and in such a horrible way.” He felt the tremor in her body. “Did you know that the shock sent Emily to the hospital? Mr. Carnell kept her there for more than a week. It was dreadful news. They were planning to be married.”
“I knew that, yes.”
“And then she left us. She wrote to me at first, but her letters became more and more infrequent and at last stopped altogether. She was in Chicago for a while and then Salt Lake City. I haven’t had a word from her since Christmas; just a note, really, asking me to remember all the other Christmases we spent together. That one was from San Francisco. And since then—nothing.”
The big room was warm and still. From upstairs came the occasional sound of a footfall, a scraping chair, but no more. When he and Karen had descended to the gymnasium, Paul had pulled shut the door behind them, serving notice to the rest of the household that they wanted to be alone.
Karen said, “And then Mr. Carnell.”
Paul nodded again. “Third man out.”
“I was very fond of him; he was quite warm and human, really, and not at all the cold mechanical man you would expect in such a position. He did everything he could for Emily after . . . He offered her a transfer to any part of the country she might wish, offered to do everything possible to help her. But no one can help in a situation like that, can one? I drove him to the airport the night he took off for Tokyo.” Her voice was melancholy.
“And his plane plunged into the Pacific,” Paul finished almost brutally. “Engine failure.”
“They were all good friends, Paul, close friends. Perhaps the best we would ever have. And one by one . . .” She stirred in his arms and turned her lips to be kissed.
Then he said, “What you’re trying to tell me, Karen, is that your turn has come. I’ve known that for several days.” He kissed her again.
“Of course.” Her voice betrayed no surprise at his knowledge. “I’m being sent to London. One day soon now.”
“Next Monday,” he told her.
“Monday,” she mused. “So we have but four days.” She turned again to look up into his face. “Paul, I am going to tell you something.”
“I already know it.”
“But I am going to tell you anyway. I know all about you.” She stared into his eyes. “All about you.”
“If you value your safety, your life,” he said slowly, “you won’t repeat that statement to anyone. Not anyone! You especially won’t mention it to anyone here in Washington.”
“I’ll keep silent,” she promised. “Do you want to know how I found out about you?”
“I do know.”
“Hush. I want to tell it my way.” There was a pale smile on her lips, a mocking. “Someone slipped rather badly in trying to hide the secret of you. They kept you locked away, but they permitted you to have the books you wanted and they permitted visitors to your room. Do you remember the day you woke up and found me waiting there? After you had been shot? I had been waiting there a long time, thinking. Just thinking about you.”
“Thank you,” he said.
“I had been thinking about you ever since that first night I knew you. At first it was no more than a routine check to determine if you could hold your silence. But as time went on and I saw the very odd precautions taken over you, the almost insane concern for your safety, the manner in which you were shielded from the outside world as well as the world being kept away from you, I began thinking. When you were moved out here on the Pike and installed in kingly grace, my thoughts moved from mere thoughts to active speculation. I inspected your bookshelves quite early; it is a part of my way of becoming better acquainted with a man. And in that early inspection I noted two or three particular titles, titles and subject matters which aroused a mild curiosity in you. Am I saying mild?
“Later, when Dr. Roy and that other scientist came on the scene, I vividly recalled those books because Roy had been the author of one. It was too much to pass off as coincidence. All that, taken in consideration with your presence here and a rather unprecedented security cover led me to a conclusion. Oh, I thought it a wild and crazy conclusion! But as I waited in the room upstairs for you to recover consciousness, after the shooting, I read Roy’s Studies. And so I like to believe I know all about you. I suppose my expression gave me away when you awoke.” Karen whirled around to him, looking up. “Paul, can you do all that?”
“Not all of it, by any means,” he said truthfully. “Roy was unable to clearly separate theory from fancy and a part of his work is pure nonsense—or so I believe. But he was four fifths correct. That much I can do.”
“I don’t think I would like that—to be in your place, I mean. I don’t think I would care for it at all.” Her hair moved against his lips as she shook her head. “And I’m not going to ask what it is like. I don’t want to know.”
What was it like?
It was like one grown man in a world of children, it was one set of vocal cords in a deaf-mute society, it was a broadcasting station in a civilization lacking radios, a knowledge of writing in a world where no one knew how to read. What was it like? It was like a grown man, himself, making love to a naive, teen-age youngster. He had only to plant a suggestion and she would comply, only to insert a thought or a notion into her mind and she would act on it as if it were her own thought. She could not discern a difference.
“Someone,” she repeated impishly, “would be awfully angry if they knew the mistake they made. They permitted the three of us in a room together: you, me, and a book.”
“That someone would be more than angry,” he warned again. “So you must be careful never to repeat this.”
“I said I’d be careful, Paul. I will. I know why.” She thought a moment. “For what reason am I being sent to London?”
“To separate us, as Peter and Carnell were separated. And Emily, too, if she hadn’t moved away of her own free will. You’re my last close friend here, so you have to go.”
“I’m more than that,” Karen reminded him softly. She put out a hand into the air, flipping her fingers, knocking down tenpins or houses of cards in her imagination. “Peter, gone; Emily, gone; Mr. Carnell, gone.” A final, fourth flip. “Karen, going.”
“You’re only making things tougher for yourself, Karen. Let’s enjoy what remain
s. We have four days.”
“No,” she contradicted. “We have forever.”
He had no wish to discourage her and kept silent. Peter Conklin had been thoroughly shocked to learn he would not see Paul again, and his had been a more stable mind with tighter discipline. There was no guessing Karen’s probable reaction to such news.
“Paul,” she said suddenly, “come here . . .” She tugged at him, causing him to fall forward toward her.
Instinctively he spread his hands on the floor to stop his fall and brace himself. “Now, Karen,” he laughed at her, “gymnasiums have hardwood floors.”
“I’m not complaining, Paul. Come here.”
XIV.
A spring rain had turned the gravel road to a slippery, sloshing roadway and the black Packard sedan traveled cautiously over it, the tires sending up occasional sprays of dirty water when they hit a puddle. On either side of the road the Maryland countryside was blossoming with the new season and already the short grass was a live green, while the hardier trees had long since shot their buds. The Packard moved on at a steady, unslowing clip with Washington far behind.
After a while it navigated a wide curve in the road and a fence appeared ahead, a gate swung shut across the road. A sentry box stood to one side of the gate and beyond that were a few tents pegged out in a precise line. Men stood guard behind the gate, and two waited before it. The Packard drew up and stopped.
An M.P. strode up to either side of the car and peered in the windows.
“Your passes and identification, please?”
Paul handed his to the soldier nearest him. Beside him, the car’s driver was offering his through the opposite window. Two men sitting in the rear seat held theirs ready, waiting their turn. The M.P. stared at his pass and the small photograph affixed to it as if he were memorizing it and then gave Paul a close, careful scrutiny. He passed on to the remaining identification, to swing back to Paul’s face for a final look. After a moment he returned the cards.
“Thank you, sir.” The M.P. moved to the men in the rear seat and the procedure was repeated. Afterward, one of the soldiers dropped to the ground to peer under the car while the other requested the keys to look into the trunk. Satisfied, he handed the keys back to the driver.
“Thank you, sir. You may proceed.” He signaled, and the wide gate swung open. The Packard passed through.
Scarcely a mile along the twisting gravel road they arrived at a high stone wall and a second gate. More guards waited there, and the ritual was repeated all over again. When they were passed through, Paul turned to look back.
He said, “They must be hiding something in here. A rocket ship, maybe?”
The driver grunted, but gave no other answer. He and the two silent men occupying the rear seat were strangers, operatives Paul had not seen before. They were military men, Paul knew, but were habitually dressed in civvies. Behind him in the old house on the Pike, he had left the bodyguards and the switchboard girls and the cook, left them all. The past was cut off, and no one from the past remained. Slater had deliberately turned a new page onto a new world and had ripped out and thrown away all the old pages of the familiar book. He briefly recalled Karen knocking down the imaginary figures with her fingers, one, two, three, four. Paul had one savage thought and then turned his mind from the girl. Slater was going to pay dearly for one and four.
The Packard rolled on through a thick woods and the road was improved, black topping replacing the crunching gravel. Abruptly they were out of the woods and into the open sunshine, with spacious green lawns spreading away in every direction. It was still a respectable distance to the house. Paul stared at it through the windshield, looking at every feature he had often seen in someone else’s mind. It was as old and as beautiful as people had said, or thought, with gleaming white trim and tall columns setting it off amidst the lush green background. Paul peered around.
“Where’s the rocket ship?”
The driver only glanced at him and pulled the car up before the entranceway. A butler came running out and opened the doors of the car. Paul climbed out, stretched, and stepped back. The two men who had ridden in the rear seat stood beside him; doors slammed, and the car moved away.
“Good afternoon, sir,” the butler greeted him. “May I show you to your apartment?”
“Yes. Where is it?”
“The third floor, sir. In that wing.” The butler pointed to a row of windows.
“Did my trunks come?”
“Yes, sir. I have put everything away.” He turned and led the way.
“Where’s the rocket ship?” Paul wanted to know.
The man didn’t hesitate in his stride. “We have no rocket ship, sir. Not to my knowledge.”
They went through the great front door and into a reception hall, where still another man waited. He glanced up as they entered, nodded briefly to Paul, flicked a glance at the two others bringing up the rear and looked away. Paul was inwardly amused. Another sentry. And undoubtedly the back door contained still another. The butler continued on through the hall into a large and brilliantly lighted room, turned left, and finally stopped before a door.
“The elevator, sir.” He opened the door. The four of them crowded in. Paul’s last glimpse of the big room was of a magnificent chandelier hanging in the center of an oval ceiling. The doors closed and the elevator lifted smoothly and silently. It stopped automatically at the third floor and they got out. The two men stayed beside the elevator, while the butler and Paul turned away and moved along a short, wide corridor. This particular end of the corridor contained but three widely separated doors. The butler stopped at the third and last one. He glanced up and saw Paul’s questioning gaze on the other two doors.
“The nearest one is a linen closet, sir,” he said without being asked. “That first one is another apartment, connecting with yours. It is to be used by your visitors, sir, if you desire.” He opened Paul’s door and stood aside.
Paul found he had three rooms and a bath. Bookcases had been built into the walls of one, forming a library and study. All of his books had been installed on the shelves, leaving much room for future acquisitions. He looked for Roy’s volume and found it in the same corner of the same shelf it had occupied in the old house. The second room was a living room, the one which opened onto the hallway, and the bedroom and bath made up the rest. All but the bedroom and the attending bath overlooked the front of the house and the winding drive which led to the distant gates. The bedroom, around on the side, overlooked a new swimming pool. He sat down.
“If you need anything, sir, ring. The bell push is there by the door. My name is Singer.”
“Glad to meet you,” Paul said. “I’m Breen.”
“Thank you, sir.” And he left.
Paul relaxed on the soft chair, looking about the room. From some ancient, forgotten picture he remembered a few words of a song a girl had sung, and hummed the words. “Good-bye, little yellow bird . . .” He stopped abruptly.
There had been an unexpected reaction to that, strangely like an echo.
He twisted in the chair and glanced around the room, puzzling over the thing. There had been an echo in his mind. But that didn’t make sense—he didn’t hear echoes, he heard only words spoken to him, or about him, or distant thoughts directed on him. Exploring the train of thought, Paul tried again. “Good-bye, little yellow bird, I must . . .”
The repetition came again, the queer sense of hearing his own words relayed through . . . through someone else. He got out of the chair and walked rapidly about the apartment, searching each room. He was alone. Next he cast about for the minds of those men he had only recently met. The driver of the Packard; the man was in the garage back of the house, tinkering with the car. He was conversing with still another chauffeur, and neither of them was discussing Paul. The butler, then. But Singer had gone to his own quarters at the far end of the wing and was doing nothing more than loafing about, waiting for Paul to ring. He was thinking of Paul, but only in a dista
nt, impersonal manner. That left the two bodyguards who had ridden silently in the rear seat and who had stayed beside the elevator. Paul sent a mental feeler toward the elevator. They were gone.
But he found them almost at once. They too were in another room of the opposite wing. One sat and read and smoked. The other sat and listened with a pair of earphones on his head. Paul stared at what he read in the man’s mind and then swung about for a hasty search of his room. They were carefully hidden and he was a long time in finding them. Microphones, two of them, cunningly buried in the molding which decorated the four sides of the room where walls and ceiling met. They were tiny, nearly invisible things. Quickly then he strode into the library and found another and finally found them in his bedroom and adjoining bath. Even in the bathroom!
“Well, I’ll be damned!” he said aloud.
He heard his own surprised words repeated in the earphones fastened over the listener’s ears, heard the words repeated again as they registered in the man’s mind. His original sentence and the two quick repetitions were instantaneous, Paul mentally picking them out and separating them only by the vague tonal colorations of first the electrical reproduction and then the bodyguard’s mental patterns. It was like listening to a record of your voice, played back in the same instant you spoke.
And the other apartment?
Following the thought, Paul went to the connecting door and stepped through, to search the rooms. There were but two and the bath. Each contained a tiny microphone. He waited there a moment before going back to his own rooms, frowning. There had been an odd something about the bedroom. Retracing his steps, he again crossed to the bedroom and poked about. And then he had it. Flinging open a closet door, he found an array of feminine clothing. A chest of drawers contained still more things, and a vanity table likewise revealed occupied drawers.
A “visitor” was already in residence.
Paul sauntered back to his library and sat down in a deep, red plastic-covered chair. There was a matching footstool and he lifted the hinged top to discover a concealed liquor cabinet. Closing the lid after examining the labels on the bottles, he cried “Skoal!” to the microphones. In the distant room he heard the earphones repeat the toast. Paul propped his feet up on the footstool, clasped his hands about his knees and gazed at the sky beyond the window.
Wild Talent Page 16
