“Why don’t he answer for himself?” Alec countered suspiciously. He half stood up.
It appeared that Magee was cleaning his nails with the point of a slender knife. “Put your nose back in your glass, Alec,” he remarked in a conversational tone, without looking up, “or must I cut it off and put it there?”
The other fingered something nervously in his hand. Magee seemed not to notice it, but nevertheless told him, “If you think you can use a vibrator on me faster than I can use steel, go ahead—it will be an interesting experiment.”
The man facing him stood uncertainly for a moment longer, his tic working incessantly. Mother Johnston came up behind him and pushed him down by the shoulders, saying, “Boys! Boys! Is that any way to behave—and in front of a guest, too! Fader, put that toad sticker away. I’m ashamed of you.”
The knife was gone from his hands. “You’re right, as always, Mother,” he grinned. “Ask Molly to fill up my glass again.”
An old chap sitting on MacKinnon’s right had followed these events with alcoholic uncertainty, but he seemed to have gathered something of the gist of it, for now he fixed Dave with a serum-filled eye and inquired, “Boy, are you stooled to the rogue?” His sweetly sour breath reached MacKinnon as the old man leaned toward him and emphasized his question with a trembling finger.
Dave looked to Magee for advice and enlightenment. Magee answered for him. “No, he’s not—Mother Johnston knew that when she let him in. He’s here for sanctuary—as our customs provide!”
An uneasy stir ran around the room. Molly paused in her serving and listened openly. But the old man seemed satisfied. “True—true enough,” he agreed, and took another pull at his drink. “Sanctuary may be given when needed, if—” His words were lost in a mumble.
The nervous tension slackened. Most of those present were subconsciously glad to follow the lead of the old man and excuse the intrusion on the score of necessity. Magee turned back to Dave. “I thought that what you didn’t know couldn’t hurt you—or us—but the matter has been opened.”
“But what did he mean?”
“Gramps asked you if you had been stooled to the rogue—whether or not you were a member of the ancient and honorable fraternity of thieves and pickpockets!”
Magee stared into Dave’s face with a look of saturnine amusement. Dave looked uncertainly from Magee to the others, saw them exchange glances, and wondered what answer was expected of him.
Alec broke the pause. “Well,” he sneered, “what are you waiting for? Go ahead and put the question to him—or are the great Fader’s friends free to use this club without so much as a by your leave?”
“I thought I told you to quiet down, Alec,” the Fader replied evenly. “Besides, you’re skipping a requirement. All the comrades present must first decide whether or not to put the question at all.”
A quiet little man with a chronic worried look in his eyes answered him. “I don’t think that quite applies, Fader. If he had come himself, or fallen into our hands— In that case; yes. But you brought him here. I think I speak for all when I say he should answer the question. Unless someone objects, I will ask him myself.” He allowed an interval to pass. No one spoke up. “Very well, then. Dave, you have seen too much and heard too much. Will you leave us now—or will you stay and take the oath of our guild? I must warn you that once stooled you are stooled for life—and there is but one punishment for betraying the rogue.”
He drew his thumb across his throat in an age-old deadly gesture. Gramps made an appropriate sound effect by sucking air wetly through his teeth and chuckled.
Dave looked around, Magee’s face gave him no help. “What is it that I have to swear to?” he temporized.
The parley was brought to an abrupt ending by the sound of pounding outside. There was a shout, muffled by two closed doors and a stairway, of “Open up down there!” Magee got to his feet and beckoned to Dave.
“That’s for us, kid,” he said. “Come along.”
He stepped over to a ponderous old-fashioned radio-phonograph which stood against the wall, reached under it, fiddled for a moment, then swung out one side panel of it. Dave saw that the mechanism had been cunningly rearranged in such a fashion that a man could squeeze inside it. Magee urged him into it, slammed the panel closed and left him.
MacKinnon’s face was pressed up close to the slotted grille which was intended to cover the sound box. Molly had cleared off the two extra glasses from the table and was dumping one drink so that it spread along the table top and erased the rings their glasses had made.
MacKinnon saw the Fader slide under the table and reach up. Then he was gone. Apparently he had, in some fashion, attached himself to the underside of the table.
Mother Johnston made a great to-do of opening up. The lower door she opened at once, with much noise. Then she clumped slowly up the steps, pausing, wheezing, and complaining. MacKinnon heard her unlock the door.
“A fine time to be waking honest people up!” she protested. “It’s hard enough to get the work done and make both ends meet without dropping what I’m doing every five minutes and—”
“Enough of that, old girl,” a man’s voice answered, “just get along downstairs. We have business with you.”
“What sort of business?” she demanded.
“It might be selling liquor without a license, but it’s not—this time.”
“I don’t. This is a private club. The members own the liquor; I simply serve it to them.”
“That’s as may be. It’s those members I want to talk to. Get out of the way now, and be spry about it.”
They came pushing into the room, Mother Johnston, still voluble, carried along by the van. The speaker was a sergeant of police. He was accompanied by a patrolman. Following them were two other uniformed men, but they were soldiers. McKinnon judged by the markings on their kilts that they were corporal and private—provided the insignia in New America were similar to those used by the United States Army.
The sergeant paid no attention to Mother Johnston. “All right, you men,” he called out, “line up!”
They did so, ungraciously but promptly.
“All right, corporal—take charge!”
The boy who washed up in the kitchen had been staring round-eyed. He dropped a glass. It bounced around on the hard floor, giving out bell-like sounds in the silence.
The man who had questioned Dave spoke up. “What’s all this?”
The sergeant answered with a pleased grin. “Conscription—that’s what it is. You are all enlisted in the army.”
“Press gang!” It was an involuntary gasp that came from no particular source.
The corporal stepped briskly forward. “Form a column of twos,” he directed. But the little man with the worried eyes was not done.
“I don’t understand this,” he objected. “We signed an armistice with the Free State three weeks ago.”
“That’s not your worry,” countered the sergeant, “nor mine. We are picking up every able-bodied man not in essential industry. Come along.”
“Then you can’t take me.”
“Why not?”
He held up the stump of a missing hand. The sergeant glanced from it to the corporal, who nodded grudgingly and said, “Okay—but report to the office in the morning and register.”
He started to march them out when Alec broke ranks and backed up to the wall, screaming. “You can’t do this to me! I won’t go!” His deadly little vibrator was exposed in his hand, and the right side of his face was drawn up in a spastic wink that left his teeth bare.
“Get him, Steeves,” ordered the corporal. The private stepped forward, but stopped when Alec brandished the vibrator at him. He had no desire to have a vibroblade between his ribs, and there was no doubt as to the uncontrolled dangerousness of his hysterical opponent.