“Suppose I tell you what I want and you name the fee.”
“Don’t take up the whole evening telling me, doc. I’m expecting the girl friend.”
“I’m a reporter. I think Borden Means is trying to work some kind of a racket. He has a building on his place that I want to get a look at. It’s locked, but not guarded. That building may contain something that can smear Means all over this end of the country. Any objections?”
“You mean do I like Means? I think he ought to go out to Southern California with the rest of the swamis. He’s not selling me a thing. I’m just a poor, hardworking private investigator. He’s making everybody so happy that business is beginning to stink, confidentially. No nice juicy divorce jobs in three weeks.”
“I want to get a look in that building. Then I want to go inside the main building and come out with a girl who lives there and works for Means. I think I can get her outside all right. Then it will be up to you to help me get her back here to town.”
“Not a snatch, is it, doc?”
“No. She’ll be willing to come. I have reason to believe she’s in danger. I think that Means and his... people, know that she’s trying to spy on them. They had a chance to hear her talk to me today, and I think they took that chance.”
Phil Sargo put two fists the size of boulders on the tabletop. He squinted at Jeff. “On account of how Mary will be scorched at being stood up, it’ll cost you one bill now and one bill afterward.”
Jeff took out his wallet and counted out four twenties and two tens. Sargo crumpled them and shoved them in his pocket. “Come on. We’ll stop by the office. I’ll have to pick up a gun.”
“Pick up two.”
“You got a license?”
“No. But if you should drop one once we go there and I should happen to pick it up, it wouldn’t be your fault. And it might come in handy.”
Chapter Four
Call to Arms
Sargo pulled his old car off the road five hundred yards from Means’ place. It was midnight. One light was on in the main building. The moon was almost full, and the landscape was thickly silvered.
Sargo quickly unloaded his equipment. A light collapsible ladder, a thick old blanket, wire cutters with rubber grips. He hummed softly. He handed Jeff one of the revolvers. Jeff stuffed it inside his belt without a word.
Stones rattled under their steps with startlingly loud sounds. Sargo shushed him a few times. At last they reached that portion of the wall that Sargo had selected based on the crude map Jeff had drawn for him.
Sargo, once they were at the wall, acted as casual as any plumber. He hummed under his breath, extended the ladder, joggled it into a solid position and went up with a quick agility surprising in a man of his bulk. He reached up with the wire cutters and snipped the strand. It was taut enough to making a swish and ping as it parted. He spread the blanket over the broken glass, eased himself down on top of the wall and motioned to Jeff. When Jeff was beside him he pulled up the ladder and lowered it on the inside of the wall. “No current in the wire,” he said in that low tone that doesn’t carry half as far as a whisper.
Moments later they walked cautiously across the grounds, staying out of the bright bands of moonlight. Jeff was half sick with worry about Julie. Her claim that Mike, Paul, Laura and Elaine were not of this earth had been enormously strenghthened by the incredible decomposition of the unknown object that had been affixed to his car. With human opponents it is possible to make assumptions regarding possible future courses of action. But no assumptions are valid when dealing with the unknown. There is no pattern to extrapolate.
They reached the outbuilding without seeing any movement or sign of life. It was of the same stone as the main building. It was a flat-roofed twenty-foot cube with one door. Sargo began to hum again. A coyote howled and sobbed off in the wasteland. They stood in the black shadows of the doorway. Sargo took a pencil flash out of his pocket and began to examine the door. He grunted.
“What’s the matter?”
“Put your hand on the door.”
Jeff did so. He snatched his hand away, replaced it cautiously. The door had warmth that was not warmth. It was a-tingle, pulsating with a current of some sort.
“And no keyhole. No knob. No nothing,” Sargo said with intense disgust.
Under the thin beam of the light the door had an opalescence about it, as though it had been recently oiled. Sargo began to run his hands around the frame, searching for some hidden catch.
“I don’t think that’s going to do any good,” Jeff whispered.
“What do you mean, doc?”
“I don’t think it’s a door... as we know doors.”
“So what is it, now? A window maybe?”
“Don’t clown, Sargo. This is a serious thing.”
Sargo continued searching. At last he gave up. They circled the building, hurrying where the moonlight was brightest. There were no windows.
“Now what, doc?” Sargo asked.
“Now we’ll see if we can get the girl.”
“Lead on.”
In the shadows near the doorway to the big house Jeff whispered, “I’ll try to get in and see her. That main gate is open. If and when I come out with her, we’ll get her to the car as fast as we can. If I don’t come out in five minutes, come on in after me.”
“I hope you know what this is all about, doc. I certainly don’t.”
Jeff straightened his shoulders and walked to the main door. He raised his hand to the massive bronze knocker and paused with his fingers against the cool metal. He lowered his hand and tried the big knob. It turned and the heavy door swung in without sound. The hallway was dark. He slipped in and closed the door, stood with his back to it, his breathing shallow, his skin prickling.
It took several moments before his eyes were accustomed to the lesser light of the hallway. He knew that Julie’s room was upstairs. He knew in which end of the building it was. He did not know which door would be hers.
For a time he doubted the wisdom of his decision to take her out of there. It had seemed wiser for her to stay there... until he had found out about the device affixed to the car.
Yes, the world was a big place and surely a small girl could be hidden where no one — human or alien — could find her.
He drifted silently by the doorway of the room containing all the office equipment. He looked in and saw the military alignment of the desks, silent in a mild shaft of moonlight.
He reached the stairs and remembered reading somewhere that the center of the treads were most likely to squeak.
When he reached the fifth stair, staying close to the edge, sliding his hand up the railing, the lights came on. For a moment they blinded him. He turned. The one called Mike stood by the light switch, his back against the wall, his smile lazy and contained. The taller girl stood a few feet from him. In panic he looked up the stairs. The other man, the one who must be called Paul, sat on the top step, indolent, his forearms on his knees, his hands hanging limp from his wrists. The other girl stood so close to Paul that his shoulder brushed her skirt.
There was nothing specifically threatening about their attitude. Jeff had seen a cat act the same way, bored with playing with a mouse, yawning and looking away before making another dutiful pounce.
“Where’s Julie?” he demanded.
The tall girl — Laura — made a most peculiar gesture with one hand. It utilized the extraordinary flexibility of her wrist. The other three smiled with cool delight, as though it were a joke that was slightly improper.
“Where is she?”
“Sleeping,” said Mike. He cocked his head on one side. “No. Now she’s half awake. She moaned a little. Very interesting. Transmission on the alpha level. Not many of you have that, you know.”