A Saucer of Loneliness (26 page)

“Lie to the end, won’t you? Well, it’ll amaze you to know that I ducked into the bar at Roby’s for a standup lunch today at one-thirty and saw you with my own eyes.”

“You better get those eyes retreaded,” snarled Killilea. “Why didn’t you take the trouble to walk over and make sure?”

“If I ever got close enough to Jules Croy to talk to him, I’d tear his head off. And from now on the same goes for you. And if I hear one syllable from you on this phone again, I’ll slam this thing down so hard I’ll shunt it clear down to your end.”

This time Killilea was ready, and had the receiver away from his ear when the crash came.

“It seems,” he told Prue tiredly, “that I was seen having lunch with an arch-villain, who has tainted me. I didn’t have lunch with
anyone but the man you saw. Hartog.”

“I don’t like him,” Prue said, for the second time that day.

“Who was the villain?”

“Name’s Croy, Jules Croy,” said Killilea. Prue shook her head vaguely. “I’ve heard of him. One of those business octopi, finger in this, fifty thousand shares in that. Always buying up educators and research people with bequests. Egmont says he’s trying to make a sort of glorified Parent-Teacher’s Association out of what’s left of the Ethical Science Board. Egg’s always been real passionate about the Board, and it was like losing an arm to him when it folded. I guess he needed something to be real mad at, and the idea of me spying for this Croy supplied it.”

“What about this man you had lunch with, this Hartog?”

“Oh, he’s harmless. Interesting sometimes, the way one of those medical museums that feature replicas of skin diseases in life-size wax models is interesting. Did he give you a bad time?’

“Who—that little man?”

“I gather he made a series of passes.…”

“Oh,” she said. “That. That never bothers me, Killy. You know that.”

He knew it. When anyone irritated or bored her, she could leave the room without stirring from her chair. Her fogbound mood was absolutely impervious. “Oh,” he said. “I thought … but you say he annoyed you.”

“I didn’t. I said I didn’t like him. He … was the one who introduced me to Landey. And Koala—Dr. Pretorio—he knew him too. Koala and I once went to a party where he was. Compared to them, Hartog is such a little snipe.”

“Knew Pretorio … hmm. Prue, did he know Karl Monck too?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so. Killy, what is it?”

“Let me think … let me think.” Suddenly he brought his hand down on the table, hard. “Prue! Hartog is the one who found you for me. He introduced himself to me at a bar down the street … let me see if I can remember exactly how … he questioned me in that funny way of his, I remember. He made sure of my name—yes, and—”

He looked down at his right palm. “What is it?” asked Prue, terror in her voice at the expression on his face.

“When we shook hands,” he said evenly, “he scratched me. Look. With a ring he wore. A big cheap ring, the stone was missing, but the mounting had an edge.”

Anger and terror mingled and mounted in the look they exchanged.

“I was right,” she whispered. “You see … if I’d come home last night—oh, Killy!”

He looked at the hand. He felt as if he had been kicked in the stomach.

“Is there a—an antidote?”

He shook his head. “It’s not the sort of thing that has an antidote. I mean, an acid poison can be counteracted by a base chemical of equal strength and opposite action. But things like this—hormones, for example. Progesterone and testosterone have opposite end effects, but a very similar way of bringing them about. I’ve never made any of this stuff, you know. I can’t tell exactly how it acts or how long it lasts unless I do. It would surely have an active period, and then get absorbed and excreted like any hormone. How long that would be, I don’t really know. I’ve got to develop a test for it. Another test for it,” he said, giving her a painful grin.

“Well, at least we know. Now—this nasty little Hartog. Do you suppose Egmont was right? Could he really be this Jules Croy?”

“I guess he could. I’m trying to recall what happened today, at lunch. He came in—yes, that’s right, he saw me and stopped dead, and I never saw a more astonished man.”

“He sent you to me last night, didn’t he? He must have known you were looking for me. He cut you with his ring, and he told you where I was, and he must have been sure that—no wonder he was astonished! You shouldn’t have been alive today! Well—what did he say?”

“An involved sort of philosophic conversation. As usual with him, it was about sex.” He thought back. “What it amounted to, was an attempt to pump me for information about you, and when that drew a blank, an effort to find some other woman for me, and then some
delving into why I wasn’t at all interested. It all fits,” he said, almost awed. “The warped, wealthy little misfit, trying to buy his way into the high levels of science, trying to get control of the Ethical Science Board, removing the men who would have no use for his kind. He’ll run it, Prue—it’ll still attract every real scientist who has more humanity than a milling machine—and the men he can’t control he’ll eliminate. He has my factor as a weapon, and if that ever doesn’t work, he can certainly think of other ways.”

“The factor—how did he get it?”

“That’s the one thing I can’t figure,” Killilea said grimly.

“We’ll ask him.” He looked at his watch. “Come on. We have things to do. I need a laboratory.”

The first part was easy.

It was two nights later. Prue sat alone pale and unhappy-looking, at a table at Roby’s. A cigarette burned to a long ash in the ashtray. An untouched drink stood warming in front of her. And—

“Well, hello,” said Hartog.

“Oh,” she said. She gave him a fleeting smile. He sat down quickly, opportunistically. “Expecting anyone?”

“No,” she said.

“Oh,” he said, in his ferocious, timid way. “Dined yet?”

“Not yet,” she said. She took out a cigarette and waited. He fumbled in his pockets, and she glanced at the silver lighter lying next to her cigarettes. He mumbled an apology, picked it up, used it. When he put it down he looked puzzedly at his thumb. “I’m glad you came,” she said.

He was surprised and showed it. “I guess I’m glad too,” he said. He circled his thumb with his other hand and might have pressed it, but she reached out impulsively and took one of his hands in hers. “You haven’t ever really talked to me,” she said softly. “You’ve never given me a chance to really know you.”

He talked, then, and when the conversation edged over to his preoccupation, it found her unperturbed. They dined. Afterward he said he felt strange. She said she had a little apartment nearby. Perhaps he’d be more comfortable there.…

She took him home.

She took his hat and coat and made him a drink and softly asked permission to change, and slipped into the bedroom. Hartog sat and sipped his drink and when he heard a sound behind him he said, “Come sit by me.”

“All right,” said Killilea.

Hartog came up on the couch as if it had contained a spark coil. Killilea circled the couch and pushed his chest. Hartog sat down again.

“Wh-what is this? The old badger game?”

“A much better game than that, Croy,” said KilliIea.

“Croy?”

“You’re not going to deny it,” said Killilea flatly. “Can you use a jeweler’s loupe?”

“Use a what? What are you talking about? What is all this?”

“Here,” said Killilea. Hartog took the loupe hesitatingly.

“I want to show you something.” Killilea scooped the silver lighter off the end table and sat down close to Hartog. He raised the snuffer-lid of the lighter and held it close to Hartog’s face. “Look through the loupe. Look right there, at the spark wheel.”

Hartog stared at him then screwed the loupe into his eye Killilea took out a mechanical pencil and pointed with it. “Watch right there.” With the tip of his finger on the side—not the rim—of the spark wheel, he turned it. “See it, Croy?”

“No. Yes I do. A little hair.”

“Not a hair. A needle.”

“It worked fine, Killy,” said Prue from the bedroom doorway. She had not changed. “He barely felt it.”

“A little more refined than cutting someone with a finger ring,” said Killilea.

“What have you done to me? Let me out of here!”

“What did you do to him?” Prue asked coldly of Hartog, pointing at Killilea.

“Is this some sort of a joke? I told you I was sorry about cutting you. What sort of childish—”

“Shut up, Croy,” said Killilea tiredly. “I know who you are and what you’re up to.”

“I don’t know what you mean. Why are you calling me Croy? What do you want from me?”

“Not a thing. Not a thing in the world.” Killilea crossed to the door and locked it. “Just sit there and take it easy.”

“You know your biochemistry,” said Prue. “You’re going to have heart failure, poor man.”

Hartog looked at his thumb. “You mean you … that this is going to—why, you idiot, that won’t work unless I—” he stopped.

Killilea grinned coldly. “Unless you what?” When Hartog didn’t answer, Killilea said, “Hospitality has its limits, after all. Much as we enjoy company …” The bantering dropped out of his voice. “You have the wrong idea. You’re going to die, Croy. In a half hour or so. I didn’t have the time or the apparatus to make up the factor you used on me. You’ve got a dose of nice, simple, undetectable hormone poison.”

“No!” gasped Hartog. “You
can’t
! You mustn’t! You’ve got this all wrong, Killilea. I swear it! I’m not what you think I am.…”

“Yes you are,” said Killilea blackly. “I think you’re a megalomaniac name of Jules Croy. I think you got on to my research in hormone-complex analogies. I think you used it to make some of the deadliest, most hellish extract that ever appeared on this Earth. I’m sure that besides myself no one but you knows about it, and inside the hour no one but I will have it. It will be safe with me.”

“What are you going to do with it?” Hartog asked faintly.

“Forget it. Pretend it never existed.… I see you’re not denying anything any more.”

“I’m Croy,” said the man, with his eyes closed. “You’re doing the right thing with the factor. But you’re wrong about me. Believe me, you are. And you’re wrong about no one else knowing.”

Killilea caught his breath “Who else knows?” he demanded.

“I can’t tell you that.”

“He’s lying,” said KilliIea. “Croy, we have thirty minutes or so to kill, and there’s nothing that can save you now. Why go out full of lies? Why not tell the truth?”

“There’s nothing you could do if I did … it’s too late now. I’m the only one who could help.” He looked up at them piteously. “Am
I going to die? Am I really going to die?”

Killilea nodded.

“It’s a hard idea to get used to,” Croy said, as if to himself.

“Tough,” said Killilea. He wiped his forehead. “If you think we’re enjoying this, we’re not.”

“I know that,” said Croy surprisingly.

“You’re taking this better than I thought you would.”

“Am I? I hate the idea of dying—no, I don’t. It’s the idea of being dead I hate.”

“Still the barroom philosopher,” Killilea sneered.

“Don’t,” said Prue. “We don’t have to hurt him, Killy. We just want him dead.”

“Thanks,” said Croy. He looked at Killilea. “I’m going to tell you everything. I don’t expect you to believe it. You will, though. That won’t help me, of course; I’ll be dead several weeks by that time. But as you say, I have a few minutes to kill …”

He lay back. Sweat glistened on his upper lip. “You give me too much credit. I’m no scientist. I wouldn’t know a ketosteroid from castor oil. I’m just a little man with a big bank account. I s’pose everyone has his poses. My analyst once told me I had a Haroun-al-Raschid pattern. Dressing up in cheap clothes and pretending to be something less than I was … giving sums of money secretly to this one and that one, not to help, just to
affect
people. Intrigues, secrets … the breath of life to me. Breath of life … I feel awful. Is that symptomatic or psychosomatic?”

“Symptomatic,” said Killilea. “Go on. If you want to.”

“It was Pretorio who got on to what you were doing. One of the few real all-around scientists in this century. Immense ability to extrapolate. He saw the directions your researches were taking you, and he got alarmed when you quit reporting progress but kept on working.”

“But how did he
know
?”

“Through me. I own Zwing & Rockwood.”

Killilea clapped a hand to his head. “I
never
thought of that!”

“What, Killy? Who’s Zwing and Rockwood?”

“Glassblowers! Work like mine calls for very special custom apparatus.
And step by step, as I ordered apparatus—”

“That’s it,” nodded Croy. “For Pretorio it wasn’t too tough. He was working right along with you the whole time. Sometimes he was ahead. Sometimes he would call and tell me exactly what piece of glass you’d order next.”

“I
thought
I was getting fantastically good service.”

“You were.”

“What on earth was Pretorio after? Why didn’t he come to me? How did you happen to be working with him?”

“What was he after? What he told me was that he was afraid you didn’t know the possibilities of what you were doing. He was so afraid of it that he didn’t want to tip you off by asking you. After all, he was the great extrapolator, you know. As for me, I was flattered. He had me completely spellbound. You just don’t know what a tremendous man he was, what an—an aura he had.”

“I do,” said Prue.

“I did absolutely everything he told me to do. Some of it I couldn’t understand, but I trusted him completely.”

“And then he died.”

“I went sort of crazy after that, I guess. Didn’t know what to do with myself. It was pretty bad. Then one day I got a call from a man with a husky voice. He said Pretorio had left him instructions. I didn’t believe him at first, but when he started giving me details that no one but Pretorio could have told him, I had to believe.”

“Who was he?”

“He never told me. I never met him. He said it had to be that way because he hadn’t Pretorio’s great reputation. But Pretorio’s work had to go on. Well, I followed orders. You know about Landey, and then Monck. I was blind, stupid, I guess. You’ll have to take my word for it that I injected both of them and introduced them to her—” he indicated Prue with his chin—“without knowing why they were dying. I thought it was heart failure, just like everyone else. I didn’t even know she was with them when they died.”