"I am both older and changed—partly natural and partly artificial. As for the work, it's a job that no ordinary agent can handle—it takes a lot of special equipment. . ."
"You've got that, indubitably! I get goose-flesh yet every time I think of that trial."
"You think I'm proof against recognition, then, as long as I don't use my Lens?" Kinnison stuck to the issue.
"Absolutely so. . . You're here, then, on thionite?" No other is sue, Gerrond knew, could be grave enough to account for this man's presence. "But your wrist? I studied it. You can't have worn your Lens there for months—those Tellurian bracelets leave white streaks an inch wide."
"I tanned it with a pencil-beam. Nice job, eh? But what I want to ask you about is a little cooperation—as you supposed, I'm here to work on this drug ring."
"Surely—anything we can do. But Narcotics is handling that, not us—but you know that, as well as I do . . ." the officer broke off, puzzled.
"I know. That's why I want you—that and because you handle the secret service. Frankly, I'm scared to death of leaks. For that reason I'm not saying anything to anyone except Lensmen, and I'm having no dealings with anyone connected with Narcotics. I have as unimpeachable an identity as Haynes could furnish. . .."
"There's no question as to its adequacy, then," the Radeligian interposed.
"I'd like to have you pass the word around among your boys and girls that you know who I am and that I'm safe to play with. That way, if Boskone's agents spot me, it will be for an agent of Haynes's, and not for what I really am. That's the first thing. Candor
"Easily and gladly. Consider it done. Second?"
"To have a boat-load of good, tough marines on hand if I should call you. There are some Valerians coming over later but I may need help in the meantime. I may want to start a fight—quite possibly even a riot."
"They'll be ready, and they'll be big, tough, and hard. Anything else?"
"Not just now, except for one question. You know Countess Avondrin, the woman I was dancing with a while ago. Got any dope on her?"
"Certainly not—what do you mean?"
"Huh? Don't you know even that she's a Boskonian agent of some kind?"
"Man, you're crazy! She isn't an agent, she can't be. Why, she's the daughter of a Planetary Councillor, the wife of one of our most loyal officers."
"She would be—that's the type they like to get hold of."
"Prove it!" the Admiral snapped. "Prove it or retract it!" He almost lost his poise, almost looked toward the distant corner in which the bewhiskered gentleman was sitting so idly.
"QX. If she isn't an agent, why is she wearing a thought-screen? You haven't tested her, of course."
Of course not. The amenities, as has been said, demanded that certain reserves of privacy remain inviolate. The Tellurian went on:
"You didn't, but I did. On this job I can recognize nothing of good taste, of courtesy, of chivalry, or even of ordinary common decency. I suspect everyone who does not wear a Lens."
"A thought-screen!" exclaimed Gerrond. "How could she, without armor?"
"It's a late model—brand new. Just as good and just as powerful as the one I myself am wearing," Kinnison explained. "The mere fact that she's wearing it gives me a lot of highly useful information."
"What do you want me to do about her?" the Admiral asked. He was mentally a-squirm, but he was a Lensman.
"Nothing whatever—except possibly, for our own information, to find out how many of her friends have become thionite-sniffers lately. If you do anything you may warn them, although I know nothing definite about which to caution you. I'll handle her. Don't worry too much, though; I don't think she's anybody we really want. Afraid she's small fry—no such luck as that I'd get hold of a big one so soon."
"I hope she s small fry," Gerrond's thought was a grimace of distaste. "I hate Boskonia as much as anybody does, but I don't relish the idea o£ having to put that girl into the Chamber."
"If my picture is half right she can't amount to much," Kinnison replied. "A good lead is the best I can expect . . . Ill see what I can do."
For days, then, the searching Lensman pried into minds: so insidiously that he left no trace of his invasions. He examined men and women, of high and low estate. Waitresses and ambassadors, flunkeys and bankers, ermined prelates and truck-drivers. He went from city to city. Always, but with only a fraction of his brain, he played the part of Chester Q. Fordyce; ninety-nine percent of his stupendous mind was probing, searching, and analyzing. Into what charnel pits of filth and corruption he delved, into what fastnesses of truth and loyalty and high courage and ideals, must be left entirely to the imagination; for the Lensman never has spoken and never will speak of these things.
He went back to Ardith and, late at night, approached the dwelling of Count Avondrin. A servant arose and admitted the visitor, not knowing then or ever that he did so. The bedroom door was locked from the inside, but what of that? What resistance can any mechanism offer to a master craftsman, plentifully supplied with tools, who can perceive every component part, however deeply buried?
The door opened. The Countess was a light sleeper, but before she could utter a single scream one powerful hand clamped her mouth, another snapped the switch of her supposedly carefully concealed thought-screen generator. What followed was done very quickly.
Mr. Fordyce strolled back to his hotel and Lensman Kinnison directed a thought at Lensman Gerrond.
"Better fake up some kind of an excuse for having a couple of guards or policemen in front of Count Avondrin's town house at eight twenty five this morning. The Countess is going to have a brainstorm."
"What have . . . er, what will she do?"
"Nothing much. Scream a bit, rush out-of-doors half dressed, and fight anything and everybody that touches her. Warn the officers that she'll kick, scratch, and bite. There will be plenty of signs of a prowler having been in her room, but if they can find him they're good— very good. She'll have all the signs and symptoms, even to the puncture, of having been given a shot in the arm of something the doctors won't be able to find or to identify. But there will be no question raised of insanity or of any other permanent damage—she'll be right as rain in a couple of months."
"Oh, that mind-ray machine of yours again, eh? And that's all you're going to do to her?"
"That's all. I can let her off easy and still be just, I think. She's helped me a lot. She'll be a good girl from now on, too; I've thrown a scare into her that will last her the rest of her life."
"Fine business, Gray Lensman! What else?"
"I'd like to have you at the Tellurian Ambassador's Ball day after tomorrow, if it's convenient."
"I've been planning on it, since it's on the 'must' list. Shall I bring anything or anyone special?"
"No. I just want you on hand to give me any information you can on a person who will probably be there to investigate what happened to the Countess."
"Ill be there," and he was.
It was a gay and colorful throng, but neither of the two Lensmen was in any mood for gayety. They acted, of course. They neither sought nor avoided each other; but, somehow, they were never alone together.
"Man or woman?" asked Gerrond.
"I don't know. All I've got is the recognition."
The Radeligian did not ask what that signal was to be. Not that he was not curious; but if the Gray Lensman wanted him to know it he would tell him—if not, he wouldn't tell him even if he asked.
Suddenly the Radeligian's attention was wrenched toward the doorway, to see the most marvelously, the most flawlessly beautiful woman he had ever seen. But not long did he contemplate that beauty; for the Tellurian Lensman's thoughts were fairly seething, despite his iron control.
"Do you mean . . . you can't mean . . ." Gerrond faltered.
"She's the one!" Kinnison rasped. "She looks like an angel, but take it from me, she isn't.
She's one of the slimiest snakes that ever crawled—she's so low she could p
ut on a tall silk hat and walk under a duck. I know she's beautiful. She's a riot, a seven-section callout, a thionite dream. So what? She is also Dessa Desplaines, formerly of Aldebaran IL Does that mean anything to you?"
"Not a thing, Kinnison."
"She's in it, clear to her neck. I had a chance to wring her neck once, too, damn it all, and didn't. She's got a carballoy crust, coming here now, with all our Narcotics on the job . . . wonder if they think they've got Enforcement so badly whipped that they can get away with stuff as rough as this . . . sure you don't know her, or know of her?"
"I never saw her before, or heard of her."
"Perhaps she isn't known, out this way. Or maybe they think they're ready for a show-down . . . or don't care. But her being here ties me up in hard knots— she'll recognize me, for all the tea in China. You know the Narcotics' Lensmen, don't you?"
"Certainly."
"Call one of them, right now. Tell him that Dessa Desplaines, the zwilnik5 houri, is right here on the floor . . . What? He doesn't know her, either? And none of our boys are Lensmen!
Make it a three-way. Lensman Winstead? Kinnison of Sol in, Unattached. Sure that none of you recognize this picture?" and he transmitted a perfect image of the ravishing creature then moving regally across the floor. "Nobody does? Maybe that's why she's here, then—they thought she could get away with it She's your meat—come and get her."
5Any entity connected with the illicit drug traffic. E.E.S.
"You'll appear against her, of course?"
"If necessary—but it won't be. As soon as she sees the game's up, all hell will be out for noon."
As soon as the connection had been broken, Kinnison realized that the thing could not be done that way; that he could not stay out of it. No man alive save himself could prevent her from flashing a warning—badly as he hated to, he had to do it Gerrond glanced at him curiously: he had received a few of those racing thoughts.
"Tune in on this." Kinnison grinned wryly. "If the last meeting I had with her is any criterion, it ought to be good. S'pose anybody around here understands Aldebaranian?”
“Never heard it mentioned if they do."
The Tellurian walked blithely up to the radiant visitor, held out his hand in Earthly—and Aldebaranian—greeting, and spoke:
"Madame Desplaines would not remember Chester Q. Fordyce, of course. It is of the piteousness that I should be 10 accursedly of the ordinariness; for to see Madame but the one time, as I did at the New Year's Ball in High Altamont, is to remember her forever."
"Such a flatterer!" the woman laughed. "I trust that you will forgive me, Mr. Fordyce, but one meets so many interesting . . ." her eyes widened in surprise, an expression which changed rapidly to one of flaming hatred, not umnixed with fear.
"So you do know me, you bedroom-eyed Aldebaranian hell-cat," he remarked, evenly. "I thought you would."
"Yes, you sweet, uncontaminated sissy, you overgrown superboy-scout, I do!" she hissed, malevolently, and made a quick motion toward her corsage. These two, as has been intimated, were friends of old.
Quick though she was, the man was quicker. His left hand darted out to seize her left wrist; his right, flashing around her body, grasped her right and held it rigidly in the small of her back. Thus they walked away.
"Stop!" she flared. "You're making a spectacle of me!"
"Now isn't that just too bad?" His lips smiled, for the benefit of the observers, but his eyes held no glint of mirth. "These folks will think that this is the way all Aldebaranian friends walk together. If you think for a second you've got any chance at all of touching that sounder—think again. Stop wiggling! Even if you can shimmy enough to work it I’ll smash your brain to a pulp before it contacts once!"
Outside, in the grounds: "Oh, Lensman, let's sit down and talk this over!" and the girl brought into play everything she had. It was a distressing scene, but it left the Lensman cold.
"Save your breath," he advised her finally, wearily. 'To me you're just another zwilnik, no more and no less. A female louse is still a louse; and calling a zwilnik a louse is insulting the whole louse family."
He said that; and, saying it, knew it to be the exact and crystal truth: but not even that knowledge could mitigate in any iota the recoiling of his every fiber from the deed which he was about to do. He could not even pray, with immortal Merritt's Dwayanu:
"Luka—turn your wheel so I need not slay this woman/"
It had to be. Why in all the nine hells of Valeria did he have to be a Lensman? Why did he have to be the one to do it? But it had to be done, and soon; they'd be here shortly.
"There's just one thing you can do to make me believe you're even partially innocent," he ground out, "that you have even one decent thought or one decent instinct anywhere in you."
"What is that, Lensman? Ill do it, whatever it is!"
"Release your thought-screen and send out a call to the Big Shot."
The girl stiffened. This big cop wasn't so dumb—he really knew something. He must die, and at once. How could she get word to . . .?
Simultaneously Kinnison perceived that for which he had been waiting; the Narcotics men were coming.
He tore open the woman's gown, flipped the switch of her thought-screen, and invaded her mind. But, fast as he was, he was late—almost too late altogether. He could get neither direction line nor location; but only and faintly a picture of a space-dock saloon, of a repulsively obese man in a luxuriously-furnished back room. Then her mind went completely blank and her body slumped down, bonelessly.
Thus Narcotics found them; the woman inert and flaccid upon the bench, the man staring down at her in black abstraction.
CHAPTER 6
ROUGH-HOUSE
"Suicide? or did you . . ." Gerrond paused, delicately. Winstead, the Lensman of Narcotics, said nothing, but looked on intently.
"Neither," Kinnison replied, still studying. "I would have had to, but she beat me to it."
"What d'you mean, 'neither'? She's dead, isn't she? How did it happen?"
"Not yet, and unless I'm more cockeyed even than usual, she won't be. She isn't the type to rub herself out. Ever, under any conditions. As to 'how’, that was easy. A hollow false tooth.
Simple, but new . . . and clever. But why? WHY?" Kinnison was thinking to himself more than addressing his companions. "If they had killed her, yes. As it is, it doesn't make any kind of sense—any of it."
"But the girl's dying!" protested Gerrond. "What're you going to do?" . .
"I wish to Klono I knew." The Tellurian was puzzled, groping. "No hurry doing anything about her—what was done to her nobody can undo . . . BUT WHY? . . . unless I can fit these pieces together into some kind of a pattern I’ll never know what it's all about . . . none of it makes sense . . ." He shook himself and went on: "One thing is plain. She won't die. If they had intended to kill her, she would've died right then. They figure she's worth saving; in which I agree with them. At the same time, they certainly aren't planning on letting me tap her knowledge, and they may be figuring on taking her away from us. Therefore, as long^as she stays alive—or even not dead, the way she is now —guard her so heavily that an army can't get her. If she should happen to die, don't leave her body unguarded for a second until she's been autopsied and you know she'll stay dead. The minute she recovers, day or night, call me. Might as well take her to the hospital now, I guess."
The call came soon that the patient had indeed recovered.
"She's talking, but I haven't answered her," Gerrond reported. "There's-something strange here, Kinnison."
"There would be—bound to be. Hold everything until I get there," and he hurried to the hospital.
"Good morning, Dessa," he greeted her in Aldebaranian. "You are feeling better, I hope?"
Her reaction was surprising. "You really know me?" she almost shrieked, and flung herself into the Lensman's arms. Not deliberately; not with her wonted, highly effective technique of bringing into play the equipment with which she was ov
erpoweringly armed. No; this was the uttery innocent, the wholly unselfconscious abandon of a very badly frightened young girl. "What happened?" she sobbed, frantically, "Where am I? Why are all these strangers here?"
Her wide, child-like, tear-filled eyes sought his; and as he probed them, deeper and deeper into the brain behind them, his face grew set and hard. Mentally, she now was a young and innocent girl! Nowhere in her mind, not even in the deepest recesses of her subconscious, was there the slightest inkling that she had even existed since her fifteenth year. It was staggering; it was unheard of; but it was indubitably a fact. For her, now, the intervening time had lapsed instantaneously—had disappeared so utterly as never to have been!
"You have been very ill, Dessa," he told her gravely, "and you are no longer a child." He led her into another room and up to a triple mirror. "See for yourself."
"But that isn't II" she protested. "It can't be! Why, she's beautiful!"
"You're all of that," the Lensman agreed casually. "You've had a bad shock. Your memory will return shortly, I think. Now you must go back to bed."
She did so, but not to sleep. Instead, she went into a trance; and so, almost, did Kinnison.
For over an hour he 'ay intensely a-sprawl in an easy chair, the while he engraved, day by day, a memory of missing years into that bare storehouse of knowledge. And finally the task was done.
"Sleep, Dessa," he told her then. "Sleep. Waken in eight hours; whole."
"Lensman, you're a maw/" Gerrond realized vaguely what had been done. "You didn't give her the truth, of course?"
"Far from it. Only that she was married and is a widow. The rest of it is highly fictitious—just enough like the real thing so she can square herself with herself if she meets old acquaintances. Plenty of lapses, of course, but they're covered by shock."
"But the husband?" queried the inquisitive Radeligian.
"That's her business," Kinnison countered, callously. "Shell tell you sometime, maybe, if she ever feels like it. One thing I did do, though—they'll never use her again. The next man that tries to hypnotize her will be lucky if he gets away alive."
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