All the Colors of Darkness

by Lloyd Biggle Jr

  Arnold nodded slowly. “When did this character first offer to buy your stock?”

  “A month ago.”

  Arnold nodded again. “Universal Trans is opening next Monday. But a month ago no one knew that. I didn’t know it myself, and if I didn’t know it no one did. A month ago I wouldn’t have given you five hundred cents for your hundred shares.”

  “Someone knew,” Darzek said. “Otherwise, why the pitch?”

  “Beats me. We finally got the bottleneck opened up just five days ago, and right up to that moment it looked as if Universal Trans was finished.”

  Darzek lit a cigarette, and blew a thoughtful smoke ring. “Queer,” he said.

  “Universal Trans has had queerer things than that happen. What with the stockholders’ suits—I think the last count was thirty-one—and the patent disputes, and the congressional investigations, and the Interstate Commerce Commission inquiries, and the Armed Forces threatening to take over the whole works, it’s a wonder we still have a company. Then there are the governmental restrictions—all kinds of governments and all kinds of restrictions. And sabotage. Nothing I’ve been able to prove, but I’m satisfied that it’s sabotage. But the worst problems of all were the technical failures. Just when we thought things were ready to roll, bugs would develop. I hate to think how many times that happened. And all along the way I’ve had the impression that some outsiders know as much about what’s going on as I do. Maybe more. I’ve been followed on and off for the past two years, and it’s beginning to make me nervous.”

  “Wonder what’s keeping Walker?” Darzek said.

  “He’s on an assignment. He’ll be along.”

  Darzek leaned back, stretched his long legs out under the table, and studied the flickering neon sign in the restaurant window. He was mentally trying to make something out of the words, DENOITIDNOC RIA, when the door jerked open and Ron Walker hurried in. He came back to their booth without breaking his stride, tossed his hat onto a nearby table, and slid in beside Darzek.

  “What’s new?” Darzek asked.

  Walker shrugged. “Nothing much. ’Tis rumored the mayor will clamp on water restrictions if it doesn’t rain. The weather bureau says this summer of 1986 will be the hottest in forty-eight years. Or maybe it was eighty-four years. Three congressional committees are due in town next week—one of them, incidentally, to investigate Universal Trans again. In Detroit, or maybe it was Chicago, some judge has ruled that a husband’s failure to equip his home with an air conditioner does not constitute proper grounds for divorce. Looks like it’s going to be a dull summer.”

  “Obviously that was the wrong question to ask a reporter,” Arnold said. “He smells smoky.”

  “Warehouse fire,” Walker said. “Empty warehouse. Dull. Even the firemen were bored. Where’s the waitress? I’m hungry.”

  Arnold picked up his empty coffee cup and hurled it at the kitchen door. It shattered noisily, and the waitress made a panicky entrance a moment later.

  “Put it on the bill,” Arnold said.

  They waited silently while she brought more coffee and fixed a plate of cold sandwiches for Walker.

  “You were right about the cook,” Arnold said to Darzek, when she had hurried back to the kitchen. “She was mussed.”

  Walker waved a sandwich. “Darzek is always right. Time probably hangs heavy on the girl’s hands. Look—we haven’t had an official meeting since—when was it? Couple of years, anyway. Universal Trans stock has been so low we’ve been practically bankrupt for that long. How would you like to recoup and make a fair profit?”

  “How much profit?” Darzek asked.

  “I can get thirteen thousand for our six hundred shares. That’s a thousand more than we paid. I don’t know what this idiot expects to do with the stock, but I thought you two should know about the offer.”

  “Syndicate of realtors?” Darzek asked.

  “Why, yes. He said—” Walker turned slowly, and stared at Darzek. “How did you know?”

  “I own a hundred shares of Universal Trans myself. They approached me a month ago.”

  “Evidently they have money to throw away.”

  “They’re not throwing it away,” Arnold said. “The stock will be worth double what we paid for it ten minutes after Universal Trans opens for business on Monday.”

  Walker leaped to his feet, upsetting his coffee cup. “Is that official?” he demanded.

  “Official and confidential,” Arnold told him. “Sit down and start mopping.”

  Walker went to work on the spilled coffee with a handful of paper napkins. “Fine bunch of friends I have,” he grumbled. “Last month Darzek sat on a jewel robbery for a week, and not a whisper did I get.”

  “I gave you a three-hour start when I cracked the case,” Darzek said. “And I’ll give you odds your editor wouldn’t use this story. How many grand openings does this make for Universal Trans? Six?”

  “Seven,” Arnold said. “We probably won’t even get snide editorial remarks on this one. The official news release goes out at noon tomorrow, and we expect a lot of papers to ignore it.”

  “Or bury it,” Walker said. “Page thirty-two, foot of the obituary column. ‘The Universal Transmitting Company announced today that it would open for business on Monday.’ Period. Taking any full-page ads this time?”

  “No. We figure people would ignore them, so we’re going to save the money. That’s what the Boss said, but personally I think he doesn’t have the money to save. Anyway, we’ll get all the publicity we need once we start moving passengers, and it’ll be free.”

  Walker nodded. “I’ll get myself assigned to cover the opening. I doubt that anyone else will want it. Everyone in favor of hanging onto the stock? Right. Meeting is adjourned. And Ted, you darned well better be right.”

  “I’ll be right—barring accidents. And Monday you’ll be darned glad we dumped that airlines stock.”

  “I want some more coffee,” Walker said.

  Arnold summoned the waitress with a shout, and they sat silently while she refilled their cups.

  “There’s just one thing that bothers me,” Darzek said, when she had returned to the kitchen. “Why was someone trying to buy my stock long before anyone at Universal Trans knew about this opening?”

  “Speculators,” Walker said. “Or maybe they have a syndicate of realtors. I’ve heard of stranger things.”

  Arnold shook his head. “More likely someone wants to get control of the company and kill it. Put it permanently out of business. The airlines interests, or the railroad and trucking interests, or—sure. Real estate. Why not? Can you guess what Universal Trans is going to do to real estate values? When we get operating properly a man will be able to live in California and commute to Wall Street by transmitter easier than he can commute now from Central Park West. The cost will be comparable with what the average commuter pays today for a train ticket. You should hear the Boss on that subject. He claims that Universal Trans is going to revolutionize our way of life more than the automobile did, and—”

  He broke off and stared at Walker. “Did you say warehouse fire?”

  “Over on the west side,” Walker said.

  Arnold got to his feet slowly. He walked slowly to the pay telephone, and when he had made his call he sat down on the nearest chair and gazed thoughtfully at a blank wall.

  “I don’t like this,” he announced finally. “That was my warehouse. We were using it for some tests.”

  “Will this affect your grand opening?” Darzek asked.

  Arnold shook his head. “We didn’t have much there, and we moved it out this afternoon.”

  “Then there’s nothing to worry about. Write it off. It was insured, wasn’t it?”

  “I suppose so. We were just renting it.”

  “Forget it.”

  “I don’t like it. We’ve had so many things happen—”

  “Probably a coincidence,” Darzek said.

  “You’re wrong there,” Walker said. “The f
ire marshal has it down as arson.”

  CHAPTER 3

  Only one New York paper gave the Universal Transmitting Company’s opening front-page coverage. Other papers across the country treated the announcement as a filler, usually under the terse heading, AGAIN? There was little editorial comment. Even the newspaper editors were tired of pointing out, with suitably cutting sarcasm, that Universal Trans was merely making propaganda to gain itself a temporary respite from the troubles that plagued it.

  The average citizen was thoroughly fed up with Universal Trans. He was not just unenthusiastic, he was uncurious to the point of indifference. As a result, the hour of the opening found the Universal Trans terminals everywhere deserted except for employees.

  The swank, half-finished New York Terminal on Eighth Avenue south of Pennsylvania Station was no exception. Ron Walker entered at eight-one that Monday morning, and looked about with the sinking feeling that he’d been had. Getting the assignment had been a problem, not because anyone else wanted it, but because his boss wanted no time wasted on Universal Trans, then or ever. The only thing that kept Walker from turning around and walking out was the knowledge that he had wasted twenty minutes of his editor’s time in arguing about the newsworthiness of Universal Trans, and he damned well had to produce some kind of story.

  Walker stopped at the information desk and was directed to the mezzanine, where he found a row of ticket windows backed up by ticket agents. He asked for a ticket to Philadelphia. He was sold a ticket to Philadelphia, presented with an artistically printed pamphlet on the joys of transmitting, issued a free fifty-thousand-dollar insurance policy, and directed to a passenger gate.

  There he surrendered his ticket, walked through a turnstile and down a short passageway that angled off from it, and seconds later found himself incoherently shouting out his story from a phone booth in Philadelphia. Almost before his startled editor had hung up Walker was back in New York with a follow-up story, and minutes after a messenger reached him with a generous sum for traveling expenses he was on the phone from London. After that performance not even the most hardened skeptic could deny that Universal Trans was in fact open for business.

  But the heat-fogged lethargy of the man in the street was not easily penetrated on that sultry July day. By ten o’clock there was only a scattering of pedestrians standing with noses pressed against the towering plate-glass windows of the Manhattan Terminal. A nattily dressed young man waved at them from a platform, stepped through a transmitter, and emerged on another platform eighty feet away, still waving. He moved six feet sideways, stepped through a second transmitting setup, and returned to his starting place.

  The average New Yorker watched for three minutes, failed to figure out the gag, and went his way grumbling. Then at ten o’clock a Universal Trans employee with a genius for promotion plucked a shapely brunette from her seat behind a ticket window, sent out for a bathing suit, and set the young man to chasing her from platform to platform. Within minutes the most colossal traffic jam in the entire history of Manhattan was under way.

  It required only one final touch of genius to plunge Eighth Avenue into complete chaos. At eleven-thirty the terminal manager supervised the draping of an enormous sign across the front windows, COME IN AND TRY IT YOURSELF—FREE OF CHARGE!

  Forthwith the crowd surged into the terminal. The early arrivals may have been more interested in chasing the brunette than in transmitting, but transmit they did, and the brunette was quickly retired as an impediment to traffic. Police fought to keep order in the lobby, and bawled lustily for reinforcements. Cars were abandoned in the street when their drivers, tired of waiting for traffic to clear, fought their way into the terminal to see what all the fuss was about. Lines spread around the huge room in fantastic coils as one New Yorker after another cautiously mounted to the platform, stepped through to the opposite platform, returned, and was forcibly moved towards an exit.

  No reliable count was made of the number of people who transmitted that day. Universal Trans claimed a hundred thousand, which was absurd, but one reporter watched for an hour with a stop watch, and stated that a minimum of twenty and a maximum of forty people passed through the lobby transmitters every minute. In midafternoon a change of procedure limited the travelers to a one-way trip across the lobby, thus doubling the number that could be accommodated.

  Lines still jammed the lobby at midnight, and business was brisk at the ticket windows. Travelers coming down from Pennsylvania Station to watch the show found their way into the ticket lines, and as a result arrived at their destination hours or days before they were expected. The airlines were receiving an avalanche of cancellations. Wall Street was digging itself out from a panic of late selling that plunged transportation stocks to unheard of lows. Universal Trans stock had probably soared to a spectacular level, but no one knew for sure because there were no sales. The harassed Universal Trans stockholders were gloatingly hanging onto it.

  To any point in the world where Universal Trans chose to set up a terminal, the traveling time by transmitter was zero; or, to be precise, it was the time a passenger required to stroll through an entrance gate, down a short passageway, and out of an exit gate. Boards of directors of many corporations were in session that Monday night, bleakly contemplating that fact and weighing its significance. The more farsighted of them found its meaning ominous, and set about balancing inventories, closing factories, ordering retoolings, and bellowing frantically at research divisions for new products.

  The age of the automobile, the air age, were finished. Demolished. Brushed aside to crumble into ignoble oblivion.

  And for the first time in three years the directors of the Universal Transmitting Company went to bed early and slept well.

  CHAPTER 4

  Jan Darzek’s only full-time employee was a former model named Jean Morris. She was a splendid ornament to his office, which she ran with ruthless competence, and on certain outside assignments her efficiency was deadly. Few people, male or female, could contemplate her superb figure and exquisite features and guess that behind her long lashes both of her large brown eyes were private.

  She entered Darzek’s employment because she fell in love with him. She quickly learned that Jan Darzek was no mortal man, but an institution of weirdly developed talents, all directed at securing elusive bits of information and assembling them into comprehensive reports to clients. By that time she had transferred her love to the detective business and begun the intense cultivation of her own talents. They made a spectacularly successful team.

  On the day of the Universal Trans opening, Darzek returned from lunch and found her puzzling over a telephone call. “From Berlin,” she said. “Supposedly from Ron Walker.”

  “You don’t say.”

  “It was a collect call.”

  “It would be,” Darzek said with a grin. “If he calls back, don’t accept it.”

  “I thought it was a gag. Or was that Ron’s twin brother that was here when I came in this morning?”

  “Ron hasn’t got a twin brother, and it was a gag. This morning he was in New York. Now he’s in Berlin. In the meantime he’s been in London, Paris, and Rome. He’s traveling on a newspaper assignment. I met one of his buddies at lunch, and heard all about it.”

  “Oh,” she said. “That transmitting business.”

  “Right. Ron is doing a world tour by transmitter, sending back local color stuff on how the foreign populations are taking it. Naturally he’d like to give me a long personal report, with me paying the phone bill. If he calls again, tell the operator I just left for Siberia by transmitter.”

  Twenty minutes later Darzek had a visitor, a businessman who had failed to control his exuberance on a trip to Paris the previous spring. There were complications.

  “Paris?” Darzek said with a smile. “Last week I’d have told you I couldn’t spare the time. This week—I’ll take care of it tomorrow.”

  The businessman delivered himself of a deep sigh of relief. “Good. I’
ll leave the whole thing in your hands. When you get back—will you be back by Friday?”

  “I’ll go over tomorrow afternoon,” Darzek said. “I’ll see the young lady, and come right back. It shouldn’t take more than a couple of hours.”

  The businessman’s brows arched in surprise, then relaxed. “Ah. Universal Trans. I’d forgotten.”

  “You’ll never forget it again,” Darzek said.

  By Tuesday morning the police had decided to capitulate. Three blocks of Eighth Avenue were blocked off. The perspiring populace jammed the street from sidewalk to sidewalk. Universal Trans developed a sudden and thoroughly justified apprehension that the crowd might interfere with business, and opened a side entrance for paying passengers. When Jan Darzek arrived on the scene Tuesday afternoon it took him forty-five minutes to push his way from the Pennsylvania Station to the Universal Trans terminal, and he was restrained from giving up only by the fact that the swelling crowd behind him looked more formidable than the crowd in front.

  Finally he reached the terminal, slipped into the side entrance with a feeling of intense relief, and was whisked by escalator to the mezzanine. He paused there for a few minutes to look down on the mob in the lobby below.

  Confusion raged about one of the demonstration transmitters. An elderly lady had thrust her umbrella through ahead of her, and then balked at following it. She hauled frantically on the umbrella, two feet of which protruded at the far platform. The umbrella did not yield. The combined eloquence of six guards finally persuaded the lady to push her umbrella the rest of the way through and follow it.

  Darzek watched her waddle away, a frown clouding his good-looking face. The temperature was ninety-five, there was no rain in sight, and—why an umbrella? Protection against the sun?