"Hi, Daddy! I fell and hurt myself. Mr. Mongo was trying to make me feel better."
I turned to face Frank Marlowe. He seemed much paler and thinner than when I'd last seen him, but I decided that could be my imagination; Marlowe had never looked that healthy to begin with. A tall man in his mid-thirties, he had a high, domed forehead which accentuated the dark, sunken hollows of his eye sockets. He looked like a man who was slowly caving in under some invisible but inexorable pressure.
"Hello, Mongo," Marlowe said warily.
"Hi, Frank," I said, absently slipping the coins Kathy had given me into my pocket and shaking the hand that was extended to me. "Good to see you."
"Thanks for taking care of Kathy." Marlowe looked down at his daughter and smiled warmly. "You all right now, kitten?"
Kathy nodded her head. Her milk money felt heavy in my pocket, and I felt foolish. By the time I realized that I probably had no right to help a seven-year-old keep secrets from her father, Frank Marlowe had taken his daughter's hand and was leading her off down the corridor toward their own apartment. Kathy looked back at me once, quickly, and the intensity of the plea in her face startled me.
When they were gone, I took the money Kathy had given me out of my pocket and counted it. There was fifty-seven cents. I went into my apartment, dropped the coins into a large ashtray on my coffee table and poured myself a stiff Scotch. I immediately downed that and poured another. I wanted nothing so much as to go back and start this particular Friday all over again.
Chapter 4
It was Saturday morning, but I had the feeling that someone had a strong urge to get in touch with me; and my home telephone was unlisted, the number given to friends only. Deciding that it was best to get what I assumed would be the most disagreeable part of the day out of the way first, I went downtown to my university office to give Vincent Smathers a shot at me. It didn't take the Nobel laureate long to get there; I was only halfway through coffee and a bagel when he burst into the office.
The photographs I'd seen of him didn't do justice to his solid, athletic build. He was, according to his university biography, fifty-four years old, but he looked younger. His brown hair was thinning on top, long and wavy at the sides and back. His eyes were his most striking feature-a cold emerald green. The left eye was slightly cast, making it difficult to meet his gaze. At the moment, his face was the color of chalk. Dr. Vincent Smathers was a very angry man.
He barely managed to bring himself to a halt in front of my desk. He stood before me, fists clenched, trembling with rage. "What were yon doing in my private laboratory?" he growled in a deep, rasping baritone.
I swallowed the last of the bagel, washed it down with coffee, patted my month with a paper napkin. "I got lost looking for the men's room," I said. It was no way to talk to a Nobel winner, but I was feeling a bit surly myself.
Smathers' tongue worked its way back and forth across his lips until he finally found the words he wanted. "You're a liar!"
"Okay, okay," I said testily. "I was looking for you or Dr. Kee. I wanted to consult you on a professional matter."
He swallowed hard and finally managed to bring his voice under control; stripped of the distorting anger, it was deep and rich-almost hypnotic. "I believe my secretary informed you that neither Dr. Kee or I have time for such matters."
"I don't like doing business with other people's secretaries. You might have extended me a little professional courtesy."
"Courtesy!" he boomed. "The door to my laboratory was locked!"
"Not when I got there," I lied. "Talk to your keeper of the keys. The door was open when I walked by, so I just went up. The next thing I knew I was face to face with Fu Manchu."
"Do you realize you could have killed that man? You might have ruptured his spleen or his heart!"
"If I'd wanted to kill him, he'd be dead," I said quietly, trying to meet Smathers' curious, off-center gaze; he seemed to be looking at me first with one eye, then with the other. "The fact of the matter is that your helper got a bit pushy. I just pushed back. If you want to pursue the matter, file a complaint. Go see the Chancellor. He might like to find out what's so damn important to you that you feel the need to keep an entire floor locked behind two inches of steel."
That backed him up. He took his hands off the top of my desk and stiffened slightly. "I don't think there's any need for that," he said carefully. His gaze rose to a spot just above my head, then snapped back to my face. "We're both professionals. I have no desire to embarrass you, and quite frankly, I can't spare the time from my work that bringing formal charges against you would entail."
"What are you working on?" I asked casually.
"I didn't come over here to discuss my work, Frederickson."
"Sorry; I was just trying to make conversation. I can't help being curious as to what kind of research requires a human watchdog like the one that came after me."
Smathers made a nervous gesture with his hand. "If you must know, Dr. Kee and I are investigating some of the more bizarre human mental aberrations. On occasion we have potentially dangerous people on that floor. That's the reason for the security. Our assistant obviously thought you might have been one of our subjects."
I laughed. "You get a lot of crazy dwarfs up there, Doctor?"
The scientist didn't smile. "I repeat: the man simply thought he was doing his job."
"What's behind those locked doors, Dr. Smathers?"
His green eyes flashed. Smathers' apologetic number, not that good to begin with, was over. "None of your business. God, you have nerve! But then, I suppose a spy needs it."
"I wasn't spying," I said evenly. "I was looking for you."
"You will not come up there again, Dr. Frederickson!"
We stared at each other for a few moments across the narrow expanse of my desk. I was the one who finally broke the silence. "Interesting colleague you have. Did you know that Dr. Kee was an adviser to the Peoples' Liberation Army in North Korea? I understand he was a brainwashing specialist."
"That's slanderous," Smathers said, flushing. "Who told you that?"
"What difference does it make? It's just a rumor. Haven't you heard it?"
"I wouldn't pay attention to such a story."
"If Dr. Kee was in Korea, why try to cover it up? That war's long over."
Smathers' eyes narrowed and his voice dropped in pitch. "Why this sudden interest, Frederickson?"
"I have tremendous respect for anyone who wins a Nobel Prize," I said truthfully. "I simply wanted to meet you. It turns out you're a very secretive person. Of course, if you've got something to hide-"
"I have nothing to hide!" Smathers snapped. He paused, thoughtfully tapped his knuckles on the top of my desk. "All right," he continued with a slight air of resignation. "I knew when I invited Kee to work with me that he'd been in the Chinese Army during the Korean War. That fact was-and is-irrelevant; there are still people who would be very upset if they knew of it, and we thought it best to keep it to ourselves. Dr. Kee is an expert in induced aberrational psychology, and the only man in the world who knows enough about the subject to be able to assist me."
"How did the two of you get together?"
"You're interrogating me!"
"No, I'm not," I said easily. "I'm just curious; and you did say that you had nothing to hide."
Smathers was uncomfortable, but apparently felt he'd already said too much to stop. "I was attending a conference in Poland," he said defensively, staring at me with his cast eye. "It was made known to me through intermediaries that Dr. Kee was available and wished to come to the United States in order to work with me. I said that I was agreeable, and he joined me soon after that."