Manly Wade Wellman - Chapbook 02 (5 page)

           
People of Earth, not conditioned as
a race to such things, were frequently intoxicated, sometimes drugged — even
driven mad—when they got too much joy-lamp. The police, apparently, had another
use for the device. A man’s wits, befuddled, would present less of an obstacle
to questioning.

 
          
“Congreve
will quiz me again,” decided Stover. “Expect to find me off balance and unable
to lie. What won’t they think of next?”

 
          
But
he had already told the truth, and it had not convinced. Checking back, he
could see why not. He had quarreled with Malbrook, struck him, threatened to
kill him on sight. He had gone forth to do it. He had been prevented, probably,
because someone had done the same errand more promptly.

 
          
“Congreve
won’t swallow it,” he told himself moodily. “I’ll get thick- tongued and mouth
all this out. He’ll think it sounds even goopier than before, and give me the
next jolt of the third degree, probably less pleasant than the joy-lamp.”

 
          
He
put his mind on the mystery again. Only proof, complete and convincing, would
set him free. Someone else had killed Malbrook. Who?

 
          
His
mind turned to the visitors who had discussed the proposed duel at his
quarters. Each, as it happened, had sworn to visit Malbrook, for good or ill.
Prrala had been the first to go, and was dead now. What of the others?

 
 
         
If he was to be fuddled by the
joy-lamp, he had best make notes from which to argue. From his belt-pouch he took
a small pad and a pencil. Waiting for the joy-lamp to give him a clear violet
light, he began to write.

 
          
REYNARDINE PHOGOR

 
          
Character:
Proud, hard,
beautiful
.
Jealous of
Malbrook’s attentions to Bee MacGowan.
Considers
herself scorned.
Probably capable of killing.

 
          
Possible
Motive: Jealousy and injured pride.

 
          
Possible
mode of
murder:                 
As Malbrook’s
fiancee,
may have known how to enter his
specially defended apartment.

 
          
PHOGOR

 
          
Character:
Venusian. People of Venus consider murder lightly.

 
          
Possible
motive: Knew nothing of stepdaughter’s engagement to Malbrook until incident of
challenge.
Surprised, resentful.

 
          
Possible
mode of
murder:                 
May have pushed in, as I am accused of doing. Got there ahead of Prrala and
Fielding, hid in room before it was closed.

 
          
ROBERT BUCKALEW

 
          
Character:
Mysterious, witty,
likeable
. Probably would kill if he
decided it necessary.

 
          
Possible
motive:           Malbrook
threatened

 
          
him
with exposure of some deadly secret.

 
          
Possible
mode of murder: As close acquaintance of Malbrook, with quarrel and threat of
long standing, may have previously planned way in and method of killing. If so,
must have left for Malbrook’s when I did.

 
          
AMYAS CROFTS

 
          
Character:
Callow, vicious, vain,
hotheaded
.

 
          
Possible
motive: In love with Bee MacGowan—jealous of Malbrook. Also, it was suggested
that Malbrook might kill him in later duel.

 
          
Possible
mode of murder: Stealthy or violent entry.

 
          
BROME FIELDING

 
          
Character:
Ruthless, haughty,
shrewd
. Long associated with
Malbrook.

 
          
Possible
motive: Possible quarrel, personal or business.
Both men
masterful and Violent, capable of such clash.

 
          
Possible
mode of murder: Hard to figure out—accomplice or illusion.

 
          
MY OWN DEFENSE

 
          
Despite
identification of myself as killer, there may have been impersonation—mask,
wig, stilts for height, costume. Light not too good, appearance brief, Prrala’s
testimony given in great pain and at moment of death.

 
          
Explosion
occurred in chamber while I was out. Recommend more thorough investigation.

 
          
This
last seemed hard to write. Stover felt weary, half-blind. He put away his notes
and tried to lie on the cot. Then he looked up at the joy- lamp, and smiled as
if in inspiration. He slid under the bed.

 
          
Thus
shaded from the befuddling glow, he felt his head wash clear again. Maybe he
wouldn’t be thinking at too great a disadvantage, after all.

 
         
TIME
passed. Stover slept,
then
awakened. His door was
being opened. A man in uniform entered. Congreve? No, this was a sturdy, dark
fellow with a tray of dishes, plainly a jailor of some sort. Two pale eyes,
strange in that swarthy face, looked at Stover.

 
          
“What
are you doing down there?” demanded the jailer. “Here, the chief thought you
might like some rations.” Stover rose. He felt no more intoxication. “What time
is it, approximately?” he asked.

           
“Evening.
Past sundown.
I’m going off duty in five minutes,” The
jailer set the tray on the bed.

 
          
Stover,
then, had slept for hours, £nd it was dark once more. “Wait,” he said. “I want
to talk to you.” What he really wanted was a chance to study the jailer’s face,
for inspiration had come to him; but the chance was short.

           
“Against orders,” he was told. “I’ve
got to push along.”

 
          
And
the man left. But not before Stover had seen that he had a face somewhat like
his own—big, straight nose, square jaw,
bright
blue
eyes. The difference was in complexion— black hair and brown skin. And
complexion could be changed.

 
          
First
Stover inspected the contents of the tray. Most of the food was synthetic—meat
paste, acid drink, a salad of cellophanelike sheets of roughage. What
interested him most was a hunk of butter substitute. Sitting down beside the
tray, Stover again produced the pencil from his belt-pouch.

 
          
With
his strong fingers he split the wood and extracted the soft, crumbly lead.
Breaking the black stick in two, he rubbed the two bits together over the
butter. The sooty powder fell thickly, and Stover mixed it in with a fork,
producing a wad of gleaming oily-black substance. Quickly he rubbed this into
his blond hair, smoothing out its curls and plastering them to his skull.
The tray, which was of shiny metal, served as a mirror.
He
looked about as dark-haired as the jailer.

 
          
“So
far so good,” he approved, and again overhauled the food-stuffs. The cup of
acid drink seemed most promising. Once more he explored his pouch. It yielded
two cigarettes. Splitting these, he dropped the shreds of tobacco into the cup.
Judicious stirring and mixing provided him with a coffee-brown liquid. He made
tests on the back of his hand, deepened the tint with the last of his powdered
pencil-lead. Finally he doffed his stylish golden garments.

 
          
With
palmful after palmful of the makeshift dye, he stained his big body and limbs,
using the tray as a mirror while he darkened his face and neck as well. His
hands and feet were also treated. Now he appeared as a naked, swarthy personage
with strangely pale eyes who was not too different from the jailer.

 
          
He
waited some time longer, to be sure that enough time had passed to insure the
fellow being well off duty. Then he sprang to the door, beating on it with his
fists.

 
          
“Help!
Help!” he roared. “I’m penned up! Prisoner’s
escaping!”

 
          
Answering
commotion sounded outside. Then a harsh voice:

 
          
“What’s
the racket in there, Stover?”

 
          
“Stover’s
gone,” he made gruff reply. “When I brought him his food, he jumped on me,
knocked me out and took my clothes. He got away!”

 
          
“Oh,
it’s Dellis?” The door was quickly unlocked and opened.

 
         
Remembering
that the jailor he impersonated had not matched his inches, Stover crouched on
the floor. The shifting light of the joy-lamp helped his disguise, and the police
guard who looked in was deceived for the moment.

 
          
“What
happened, did you say?”

           
“Can’t you see?” Stover yelled in
feigned impatience. “He knocked me out and took my uniform. There’s his rig.”
He pointed with one stained hand at his own crumpled garments in a corner.
“While you stand there, he’s probably clear away.”

 
          
“Well,
come out of there,” the guard told him. “Wrap a blanket from the cot around
you. We’ve got to
,make
a report, quick!”

 
          
Stover
wrapped himself up as directed, taking care to slump and so approximate the
lesser height of the jailor Dellis. Under the blanket he brought along his felt
and pouch. But he did not intend to appear before Congreve or other
too-observant officers. Reeling, he supported himself against the door-jamb.

 
          
“I
still feel shaky.”

 
          
“Here,
then.” Another guard had come up, and the first guard beckoned him. “Take
Dellis to the locker room while I report to the front office. That big society
lad, Stover, got away.” Leaning heavily on the newcomer’s
arm,
and half-swaddling his stained head and body in the blanket, Stover allowed
himself to be helped down another corridor and into a long room lined with
lockers. Against one wall was a cot, where he dropped with a moan.

 
          
“Hurt
bad
, Dellis?” asked the guard who had brought him.

 
          
“I
hope not,”
sighed
Stover. “Let me lie here for a
while.”

 
          
The
other left. As the door closed, Stover sprang up and to a lavatory. Scrubbing
violently, he cleansed hair and body of his messy disguise. Then he opened
locker after locker. Most of the clothes inside were too small, but he found a
drab civilian tunic in one, breeches in another, and boots in a third, all of
them fair fits. Thus properly clad, he donned his own pouch and girdle and went
to a window.

 
          
The
level of the cells was still high above the noise and glow of the canal levels.
A man less desperate might feel giddy, but Stover had no time for phobias. He
must be free to find and convict the true murderer of Malbrook. Only thus could
he hope to survive.

 
          
Quickly
he ripped the blanket into half a dozen strips. Knotting these into a rope, he
tied one end to a bracketlike fixture on the outer sill. A moment later he was
sliding down into the night.

 
          
The gravity of Mars being barely four-tenths that of Earth,
Stover’s huge body weighed no more than eighty pounds as it swung to the cord
of knotted blankets.
Even so, he needed all of his nerve, strength and
agility for what he planned to do.

 
          
A
few seconds brought him to the end of his line, thirty feet below the
window-sill. There were no windows or other openings at that point, and no
projections on the smooth concrete wall, only a metal tube, barely an inch in
diameter, that
housed some slender power lines and ran
vertically beside him.
Every fifty feet or so it was clamped
to the wall by a big staple.
One such staple held it at the point where
Stover dangled.

 
          
He
looked in the other direction. Ten or twelve yards opposite
was
another building, with many lighted windows. Given a solid footing, he might
have tried to leap. As it was, he must bridge the gap otherwise. He hung to his
blanket-cord with one hand while he tugged and tore at the metal tubing. It was
none too tough, and broke just at the staple. A jerk parted the wires inside.
He tested the broken'tube. It was springy and gave some resistance, but would
it be enough? He could only try, with a prayer to all the gods of all the
planets.

 
          
GRASPING
the tube with both hands, he quitted his cord. There he hung for a moment, like
a beetle on a grass-stalk. Then the tube began to buckle outward at the staple
clamp some fifty feet below. Stover’s eighty pounds of weight swung it out
across the chasm. He dared not look at the depths below. His eyes, turned
overhead, watched the crawl of Deimos’ disk across the starry sky. The tube was
bending swiftly now—he was traveling out and down in a swift arc.

           
Ping
!
The tube broke at the lower staple. At the
same instant Stover felt his shoulder brush against the wall of the building
opposite.
He let go of the tube, tried to clutch a window
sill, and missed. He felt suddenly sick as he slid down the crag of concrete.
His boot-heels smacked on a sill below, flew from it, and he made another
desperate grasp. This time he made good his hold, and swung there, staring in.

 
          
The
sizeable room was garishly lighted. People stood or sat inside, close-packed
around tables. There was music from a radio tuned in on Earth, and a cheerful
hubbub of everyone talking and laughing. At the table nearest the window were
men and women in middle-class celebration clothes.

 
          
One
of them flourished his loose-clenched fist, then brought it down and whipped it
open. Out danced two pale cubes with black spots on their faces.

 
          
Dice—a
game known when the pyramids were new, perhaps in the precivilized days before.
Dice, which in ancient
Rome
had gained and lost
mighty fortunes; which had delighted such rulers as Henry VIII of
England
, and such philosophers as
Samuel L. Clemens of
America
.
Dice, the one gambling
game which had lasted to the thirtieth century.

 
          
'‘Game-dive,”
panted Stover.
“Crowded, confused, relaxed.
No worry
about murders. I’ll go in.”

 
          
He
worked along the sill, toward the next window. It was too far for his arms to
span, but he spun his body sidewise, hooked a boot-toe within, let go and
hurled himself across the sill and in.

 
          
He
was in a private dining-room. A man and a woman sat at a table strewn with
dishes, smirking affectionately at each other. As Stover drew himself up, the
woman gave a little smoothered cry of alarm and shrank into her chair. The man
rose.

 
          
“Listen,”
he snarled to her, “if you say this is your husband, I’ll tell you I’m too old
for such a blackmail game.

           
“I’m nobody’s husband,” Stover interrupted.
“I just climbed in on a bet.
Thought it was a game-dive.”

 
          
“You're
one window mistaken,” the man said. “Get out of here.”

 
          
Stover
apologized and walked through a door, into the crowd beyond.

 
          
At
the large central table, “indemnity” was being played. This old space-pirate
game was almost as simple as blackjack and simpler than roulette. Each player
could call for a card at each deal, or could refuse. Only those whose cards
were of the same color stayed in. When all were satisfied, unretired players
totaled the values of their cards, and high man won both stakes and deal. The
money, which could be won or lost swiftly, was the chief excitement.

 
          
Stover
carried a sheaf of value- notes in his pouch, most of them in thousand-unit
denominations. Entering the game, he lost twice and then won a big pot and the
deal. As he distributed the cards, the radio music ceased.

 
          
“Late
news,” said an announcer’s voice, and the vision-screen across the room lighted
up.

 
          
UPON
it, huge and stern, appeared
WJ
a
man’s head and uniformed shoulders. Congreve!

 
          
“We’re
cutting in to enlist the help of all law-abiding listeners,” said Congreve’s
magnified voice, and all play ceased as attentions turned to him. “Yesterday a
murder occurred in the upper tower section. Mace Malbrook