Realizing this, I had nothing to lose by fast action. If I did as he said, I'd surely be dead. By doing what I did, I was just playing the long odds to stay alive.
I reached out as if I was about to wrap my hands around her throat. But instead, my hands grabbed an edge of the carpet on which he was standing and yanked hard. The gun went off just as his feet went out from under him. I heard the bullet whistle over my head. I didn't hang around to give him a chance to shoot again. He was still trying to pick himself up as I bolted past him and out of the room. I ran down the hallway, through the living room and foyer, through the offices of S.M.U.T. beyond, down the stairwell, and out of the building. I didn't stop running until I was safely seated on a subway bound for Manhattan.
Then I unscrambled my thoughts. The way the pieces fit, it looked like the old jealous-husband bit. Somehow Peter Highman had found out what Prudence and I were up to in the locked room. My guess was that he'd meant to kill us both, and that if I hadn't gone to the john when I did he would have succeeded. He must have thought I was there, and whatever it was he'd used to kill Prudence would undoubtedly have killed me too if I'd been in the room. Then, when he saw me in the hall, he must have revised his plans. It probably looked even better from his standpoint. He'd frame me for the murder, shoot me, be rid of both of us and go scot free with no explanations necessary. Only one thing continued to bug me: just how the hell had he killed Prudence?
I shelved that for the time being and thought about whether I should call the cops. I decided against it. It would be my word against Highman's, and at the very least I'd use up a lot of time convincing the police of my innocence. And there was always the chance that I wouldn't be able to convince them. In any case, I had no time to waste. Putnam had made that clear back in London. It was imperative that I work fast to retrieve the defecting Dr. Nyet from the clutches of S.M.U.T.
Still, there was nothing further to be done this night. So I went back to my hotel and caught a good night's sleep. When I woke up I ordered breakfast sent up to my room and told them to bring the morning papers with it.
There was no murder story splashed over the front pages. Evidently once I'd made my escape Highman also had decided not to bring in the police. He must have made up his mind to conceal his wife's murder. I wondered what he'd done with the corpse.
I found the answer in a small news item buried on page three of one of the papers. It said that the body of a naked woman had been found in the swamps of Canarsie early that morning. The body was strangely twisted, but there were no marks on it. Police were trying to identify the victim, but admitted they had no clues. From the description, it sounded like Prudence.
Renewing my decision not to become involved, I put the papers aside. If I was right about Highman's trying to cover his tracks, he wouldn't be in any hurry to tell S.M.U.T. about his wife's fate. And that meant he wouldn't tell them about me. So I ought to be able to start from scratch with my plans to infiltrate them. This time I decided to start closer to the top than a regional chapter. I called the national headquarters in Manhattan and made an appointment to see one of their higher-level execs.
The appointment was for three that afternoon. By three-thirty I had convinced the exec of my sincerity and he was already waxing enthusiastic over how useful I could be to their cause. By four-thirty we were on our way to an exclusive Park Avenue brothel!
"A brothel?" I had raised my eyebrows back in the S.M.U.T. offices when the exec made the suggestion.
"Yes. Surely you have been in such establishments before in the course of your work, Mr. Victor?"
"Well, yes, but -"
"But?"
"But isn't S.M.U.T. sort of opposed to brothels? I mean isn't one of your aims to stamp them out?"
"Precisely. But that isn't as simple as it might seem. This particular brothel, for instance, is but one such establishment being run by a large international vice ring. Getting the goods on such an organization is extremely difficult. It's a long-term project of S.M.U.T.'s to destroy this ring at its very roots. We're hoping that the occurrence planned for tonight will provide evidence toward that end. You see, we have arranged for the place to be raided tonight. However, the police are most lax and most corrupt in such matters. Therefore S.M.U.T. itself has seen fit to take a hand to insure that there will be testimony available which will at least result in the convictions of those who run this particular brothel. Now do you understand, Mr. Victor?"
"In principle, yes. But you'll have to spell out for me just how S.M.U.T. is going to participate in these proceedings."
"Very well. You and I and two other men from S.M.U.T. are going to the brothel, where we will pose as customers. There are already three young ladies from S.M.U.T. who have infiltrated the brothel in a working capacity."
"You mean they're actually selling their bodies?" I worked hard at looking shocked.
"It's a great sacrifice, but these brave young ladies didn't hesitate to volunteer to make it. Actually, I'm proud to say that there were twenty-seven other volunteers from our Manhattan office alone, but these three were chosen because of their physical qualifications. In any case, between what they have learned and the information we hope to secure tonight, S.M.U.T. not only hopes to put this establishment out of business but perhaps also to be in a position to strike at the heinous vice ring itself. I had thought that with your experience, Mr. Victor, your help might be very useful in this endeavor."
"I'll be happy to cooperate," I assured him. "But isn't five o'clock rather early to raid a brothel?"
"The raid itself won't take place until six. We just want to be in position when it does. And as to the time, you're wrong. Their busiest time, according to the S.M.U.T. girls who have infiltrated, is between five and eight. That's when the tired businessmen and commuters stop off for a quick one before catching their trains home."
"That makes sense," I nodded. But there was something else in the back of my mind that didn't make sense, and I puzzled over it to myself. If S.M.U.T.'s real aim, as Putnam had said, was to overpopulate the world, then why would they want to stamp out sex in brothels? I could see why they'd want to stamp out pornography. That provided sublimation for the sex act itself. But in a brothel the sex act was actually performed. So why, since it wasn't sublimation, should S.M.U.T. want to crack down on it?
Then I thought of something, and it all became clear. Strict birth control was always observed in brothels. Sex there was never procreative. Also, sex in a brothel was a substitute for sex in the home, which in S.M.U.T.'s eyes was definitely more apt to result in upping the birth rate. And that's why S.M.U.T. was really anti- brothel.
By the time I'd figured this out, I was in a taxicab with the three men from S.M.U.T. Seated beside me was the exec to whom I'd been talking. His name was Horace Crampdick. So help me! And he looked like his name. He was a short, flabby guy with a perpetual stoop and fat hands that seemed always to be dangling in the neighborhood of his crotch, hands that moved constantly and nervously not so much as if he didn't know what to do with them as that maybe he did and was afraid he might give in to the impulse to do it.
Next to Crampdick was the fellow he'd introduced as Jock O'Steele. He was a mountain of a man, body bulging with muscles and above it a stern red face shiny with determination to stamp out sin. He had the look of a man whose faith in the rightness of his cause is unswerving – but who nevertheless finds it necessary to take frequent cold showers.
The most interesting of the trio sat on the jumpseat. This was Singh Huy-eva, who, according to Crampdick, was an important personage in the New Delhi chapter of S.M.U.T. I had been surprised to learn that Singh Huy-eva was Indian. To me he had looked more Tibetan. In any case, he was being accorded the privilege of a visiting fireman by being taken along to the brothel. He had specifically asked to go along, and this was one of the things that intrigued me about him. You see, Crampdick had confided to me that Singh Huy-eva was a eunuch.