Kill Me Tomorrow (19 page)

“That's interesting. And it might be a very lucky break for me, Artie. You keep it up, you're going to retire awfully young.” I slipped him a bill.

“Thanks a lot,” he said. “It just seemed peculiar to me.”

“Seems peculiar to me, too. Can you describe the guy?”

He smiled. What's to smile about? I wondered.

“No trouble,” he said. “He was a
real
big guy, actually enormous—”

“What?”

“Not real tall, no more'n six or seven feet, I guess. I mean, six feet. He's so wide, you just naturally think of him like, seven feet tall maybe.”

“You do, huh?”

“I never saw
anybody
so
wide
—”

“Forget that for a minute. We want to be sure of … identification. Precise and accurate identification. Mustn't accuse anyone falsely, or even think falsely about any innocent—”

“Why'd you sit down so quick, Mr. Scott? You feel all right?”

“Of course I feel all right, you idiot.”

“Can I get you some water or something?”

“Will you shut—I mean, I'm trying to think. Can't seem to … get it working up there. Ah, identification. Tell me—think carefully now—the color of this man's hair.”

“It didn't have any color.”

“Come, Artie, everybody's hair has
some
—”

“He didn't have no hair. Bald as a egg.”

I sighed. “It's him.” I sighed again. “It's him. Can't be two monsters on one earth like Bludgett.”

“Bludgett?”

“Bludgett. I hate the sound of the word.
Bludgett
!”

“Who's he?”

“Merely a thug who took a shot at me last night. Who tried to kill me last night. Merely a human Alp who—”

“Shot at you? Tried to
kill
you?”

I'd forgotten Artie was still there. I had been talking to myself. I looked up. “Yes,” I said. “He did that. And I daresay, had the opportunity presented itself, he would have done infinitely more—”

“Oh, boy
!”

“That's a funny—what do you mean, ‘
Oh, boy!'?”

“Well, if he tried to do that to
you
, you'll sure get even with
him
, I'll bet.”

“Artie—”

“I'll bet you fix his wagon, huh? I'll bet he'll be sorry he tried to shoot you, Mr. Scott.”

“Artie—”

“You're going to catch him and beat him up, aren't you?”

“Artie, what kind of grades do you get in school?”

I don't think he heard the question. In his mind's eye, David again—after all these years—was going to slay Goliath. I had often wondered if that story was apocryphal. And never had I wondered more than now. “Tell me, Artie,” I said, “how did it go when you delivered the flowers this morning?”

“Not so hot. Some old lady with flour on her face came to the door. But this huge guy, Mr. Scott, are you going to go get him now?”

“Will you shut—Artie, let me put it in the form of a stupid question. Do you, ah, visualize me going out there and squaring off with Bludgett, and striking him down with tremendous blows?”

“Isn't that what you're going to do?”

“Well …”

“He'll get away if you don't hurry.”

“Artie, you're old enough to begin learning the real truths of life. I feel I should pass on to you some of the wisdom I've gleaned over the years. Consider: what good would it do me to beat this man up?”

“Well, he
shot
at you, he tried to
kill
you—”

“That's all well and good—bad. Artie, look at it this way. Brute force is the weapon of the savage, right? The instinctual reaction of the primitive, the animal, the throwback to the jungle, the hulking beast. Now, surely man is more than a hulking beast. Man's
brain
elevates him above the savage, his
intelligence
raises him beyond the brute. What would I prove by beating Bludgett up? Merely that I'm stronger than he is, right? Where's the joy, the pride, in that? No, I propose to outwit him.”

“Outwit?”

“Yes. It seems more sporting, a battle of mind against mind, brain against brain!”

“How?”

“Well …”

It was a good question. How
was
I going to outwit him? It was a good question, because first I had to
catch
him. How do you catch an elephant? I sent Artie on his way. Then I futzed around in the room a little, took a deep breath, squared my shoulders, and went out.

I walked around behind the hotel, down an alley there, approached the Mountain Shadows parking lot from the east. In only three or four minutes I'd spotted Bludgett. I used up another five minutes before moving toward him, though, because if Bludgett was here, one or more of his pals might be nearby. But, finally, having spotted
nobody
else in the lot, I made my move.

Bludgett sat in the front seat of a gray Chrysler sedan, parked where he had an unobstructed view of my Cadillac, on his left. He was keeping his eyes fixed so intently on my car that moving close and getting the drop on him was easy.

I leaned in the open window on the driver's right and said, “It's loaded, Bludgett. All you have to do is get smart, and I'll unload it.”

He didn't even jerk.

“It, by the way, is a Colt Special aimed at your ear.”

Still looking to his left he said a foul word, then without haste cranked that big bald head around and let sad eyes, above the little nose, rest on me. “I had a feelin',” he said. “I had a feelin' it wasn't gonna work.”

“Where are your pals?”

“There ain't none. I come alone.”

“I'll believe that the day you take up toe-dancing. How many, and where?”

“Lord's truth,” he said. “I come by myself.” He shrugged. The sedan wiggled slightly. “Come to get you, I admit, but it wasn't nobody else's idea.”

“Why?”

“You hit little Frankie in the biscuit,” he said simply.

“Frankenstein?”

“He didn't like being called that. He was funny-lookin', like me. I always called him Frankie.”

The words gave me an odd feeling. But I said, “I had a little reason, didn't I, Bludgett? Franken—Frankie, and you, were flinging hot little pills at my biscuit.”

“Sure. So what? Fact still is, you drilled his conk. So I figure I come and get you.”

Simple, matter of fact, his tone was. I hadn't any doubt he was telling me the truth, telling it his way. Still, there was something quite grisly about the flat, unemotional words: “I come and get you.”

There was a newspaper on the seat beside him. I opened the door and, with care, lifted the paper. Beneath it, as I'd expected, was his gun, a Colt .45 automatic. I took it, dropped it into my coat pocket, and said, “Come on. Out
this
side.”

His eyes dropped to the revolver in my hand, then flicked over my face. He didn't try anything. Apparently Bludgett—like most men who know guns, who have used them—had a healthy respect for the heat.

We walked back the way I'd come out, passing only a young couple on the way. For the few seconds while they were near us I put the snub-nosed Colt into my pocket, but kept it pointing at Bludgett's back. He just kept marching ahead.

When he reached the door of my suite I said, “Here it is. Take a right. Inside.”

I closed and locked the door. Then I looked at Bludgett. Well, I had him. My dream had come true. And what the hell was I going to do with him?

“Sit down, pal,” I said. “We're going to talk a spell. You're going to tell me a few things I'm curious about.”

“Not me, Scott.”

That was all. He didn't make a big thing out of it. But I'd have bet my Cad against a scooter that to him it was a simple statement of irrevocable fact.

It was, also, a fact that I couldn't—or at least wouldn't—beat the big ape over the head with a monkey wrench until he spilled. For one thing, I'd need an ape-wrench. For another, though I feel it is entirely acceptable to ruin a guy when he's attempting to do the same to you, simply to pound on a man who is sitting quietly, stolidly, waiting for it—well, it's a little out of my line.

I remembered telling Artie I proposed to outwit Bludgett. I had not told Artie
how
I proposed to do it. That was because I hadn't the faintest idea how to do it. Bludgett was not so bright that beams of light shot out of him, true; but that didn't mean I could outwit him.

What I needed was a brilliant flash of—of brilliance, like one of those light bulbs that meant “Idea!” which cartoonists used to draw in cartoons.

And, quite naturally, that was—or, rather, those were—the ideas which gave me the idea.…

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The problem was how to crack a tough nut like Bludgett.

One man might stand up to physical punishment all day but grow faint at the sight of snakes. Or rats, or spiders. Or bugs might bug him. Another might cheerfully climb Mount Everest barefoot but refuse to fly in a plane. And another—well, it was worth a try.

It took me a bit more than three-quarters of an hour to set it up. Because, first, I had to find out if it was possible, and then discover
how
to set it up. I had to call on Artie Katz again to get some items from the luggage compartment of my Cad, items like plastic cord and handcuffs so I could leave Bludgett alone in my suite, bound and gagged, for half an hour—during which time, among other things, I hunted up Dr. Fretsindler and became for a little while his eager student. After that, I had to remove some of Bludgett's bonds temporarily so I could walk him from my rooms to another and much larger room at Mountain Shadows.

There were other problems, but by twenty minutes after seven
P
.
M
.—with distant thunder rumbling and lightning beginning to flash outside—both Bludgett and I were in one of Mountain Shadows' convention halls, with seats for perhaps two hundred and fifty people facing a raised platform or stage. Those seats were empty now, because Bludgett and I were alone in the room; but here, in less than forty minutes, approximately two hundred conventioneers would be gathered to hear and see the first of tonight's lectures and demonstrations.

Or, rather, the second. Because the very first lecture and demonstration of the evening was going to be mine. I, the lone professor; Bludgett, the attentive audience of one. At least, I hoped he would be attentive. And it was, I thought, a reasonable hope. We were not only alone but on stage, Bludgett sitting in the heaviest wooden chair I could grab on short notice, ankles securely tied to its legs, but with his hands before him and free, except for the handcuffs around his massive wrists.

Also on stage was a long wooden table atop which were four items, the two nearest us being a large metal kitchen pot, turned upside down, upon which rested at approximately the level of Bludgett's head, a rock, a solid hunk of granite about the size of a man's head—actually, larger than that, since I'd hunted around till I found one the size of Bludgett's head.

Already aimed at the rock was—well, the laser.

It didn't look like much. The unit, or rather the two components of the unit, somewhat resembled a pair of oversized rectangular black-metal suitcases. Maybe it didn't look like much, but neither does a bullet unless you know what it can do. And, just as a cartridge case conceals the powder which makes the bullet go, so did the “suitcase” nearest the chunk of granite conceal an extremely powerful light source which provided the “powder” or power for the laser. It was of much the same brilliance as a strobe or flashlight used by photographers, except that it did not pulse but focused a constant beam of light on one end of the active material, the laser rod, which turned ordinary light into the laser's coherent “bullet.” All of that was hidden, but the rest of the rod projected for two feet from the end of the black-metal box and was aimed at the small boulder because that was where I had aimed it.

That rod—the real magic or wizardry—looked to me like merely a strangely murky-gray tube of solid but transparent glasslike material. What it actually was, so I'd been told, was YAG.

I know it sounds like something one might take for an upset stomach, but that is what I had been told by none other than Dr. Fretsindler, one of the world's foremost scientific authorities on everything from the original ruby laser to molecular gas lasers to the newest of all, the YAG laser. He was, in fact,
the
world's foremost authority on such a contraption as now rested on the table before Bludgett and me, since it was his very own experimental laser, designed and built by the doctor himself.

Dr. Fretsindler had told me a great many things, few of which I fully, or even emptily, understood, since one does not become an expert during the kind of quickie cram course he had so kindly—and, I blush to admit, unsuspectingly—given me. Among other things, he told me that he was the first man to solve the formerly insoluble problem of “growing large rods of multiply-doped Alphabet YAG.” I swear, those were his exact words, for they rang so strikingly in my ear that I shall probably never get them out.

He also told me that YAG could be described “simply”—again, his word—as Y
₃
Al
₅
O
_12,
or a compound of yttrium aluminum, and oxygen, which he had “doped with various rare-earth ions” and otherwise maneuvered so cleverly that he had not only become the first man ever to produce YAG rods more than a few centimeters long, but had also achieved a remarkable increase in YAG efficiency.

I told him that was swell. I didn't even ask him what a centimeter was. If I'd been going to ask the doctor any irrelevant questions I would have asked him why Y
₈
A1
₅
O
₁₂
was called YAG instead of YAO, but what I
really
wanted to know was how you turned the laser-thing on. And he finally told me even that. You pushed a little switch, that was how. You turned it on like you turned anything else on.