"Let's see how fast you can come up with two glasses of water." I waved the gun at him. He was very fast.
I opened the vial in my hand and tapped a few crystals of the drug into each glass, then motioned for Mueller to pick them up. He didn't have to be told what to do next. We marched back to the closed room, and I waited while the cloudy water disappeared down the throats of the men. Then I left them alone-I shut off the lights and closed the door.
I found a phone and dialed Garth's precinct. Then I backed up against the wall and held my gun out in front of me. The nameless forms sharing the room with me stayed hidden. At last MacGregor's welcome voice came on the line.
"Listen to me closely," I said, struggling to keep my voice steady. "I can probably only get it straight once. Garth's insanity is a setup. I think he'll be all right if you do what I say. If you do a urinalysis and blood test soon enough, I think you'll still find traces of a very unusual drug in his system. I know you will in mine, and I can prove where it came from. In the meantime, send a car to pick me up. I'm at Zwayle Labs. I have a surprise package for you."
MacGregor started to pump me for more information. I was in no shape to give it to him, and I cut him off. Boise was starting to scream. Soon, Mueller joined him.
"Please hurry," I said softly, closing my eyes. "I'm afraid."
Country for Sale
I rolled over in the dark and swatted the button on the alarm clock. Nothing happened. The jangling continued, bouncing around inside my brain like marbles in a tin cup. The hands on the clock read 3:30. I picked up the telephone and the ringing finally stopped. I pulled the receiver down near the vicinity of my mouth and muttered something unintelligible.
"Mongo? Is that you, Mongo?"
I rummaged around inside my mind until I managed to match the voice to a seven-foot giant with a penchant for collecting sea shells. I hadn't seen Roscoe Blanchard in five years, not since I'd left the circus.
"Roscoe?"
"Yeah, it's Roscoe." The voice was strained, nervous. "Sorry if I woke you up. I know it's close to midnight."
I looked at the clock again. It still read 3:30. "Roscoe, I think you need a new watch."
"Huh?"
"Where are you?"
"San Marino."
"California?"
"No. San Marino."
"I got that. But where's San Marino?"
There was a long pause at the other end of the line.
"San Marino's in San Marino," Roscoe said at last.
I decided to leave the geography lesson for later. "Roscoe, what's the matter?" I asked him.
"We've got trouble here and nobody knows what to do. I remembered Phil mentioning something about you being a private detective now. I got your number out of one of the books in the office."
"Where's Phil?"
"He's disappeared."
That woke me up. Phil was Phil Statler, owner of the Statler Brothers Circus, where I'd spent eight of the most miserable years of my life. But there aren't that many things you can do when you're a dwarf. If you end up a circus performer, there's no better man to work for than Phil Statler.
"How long has he been missing?"
"Four days. And there are some other funny things going on. Just yesterday-" It ended in a bloody gargle and the muffled sound of something very large and heavy falling.
"Roscoe! I was screaming at a dial tone; the line had been disconnected. I tasted blood and realized I had bitten into my lower lip. I lay frozen, my fingers locked around the receiver.
I sat up on the edge of the bed and leaned forward to stop my knees from shaking. Somewhere at the opposite end of thousands of miles of wire a man was dead or dying, and all I had was the name of a place I'd never heard of. I dialed the operator.
It took ten minutes to confirm that the call had come from a place called San Marino, and another ten to find out where it was: San Marino, a full-fledged United Nations member, was a country which occupied the whole of a mountain top-Mount Titano-in Italy. That was all the information I was going to get; I couldn't get through to a police station, or anyone else for that matter, because the San Marinese phone system had suddenly broken down and the phone people couldn't tell me when it would be operational again. I would just have to live with the sound of Roscoe's dying.
I brushed my teeth and packed a bag.
* * *
I met an Italian on the flight to Venice who filled me in on San Marino.
San Marino seemed to be doing quite well despite the fact that I'd never heard of it. It was-well, a dwarf, the smallest and oldest republic in the world, sixty square kilometers with 19,000 people, about enough to fill the football stadium in a small college town. It had been around since a.d. 300, when a Christian stonecutter by the name of Marino hid out on Mount Titano to avoid being fed to the Roman lions.
San Marino's geography consisted of nine towns and three castles, which a Hollywood movie company had helped renovate in the '40s. Its economic assets included heavy doses of authentic medieval atmosphere, huge bottles of cheap cognac, postage stamps, and a thriving tourist trade.
It seemed a strange place to take a circus.
I landed in Venice and rented a car. The drive to the coast town of Rimini took a little over an hour. By then it was noon. I was tired from the Atlantic crossing, and hungry. Most of all I was worried, but there didn't seem to be much sense in rushing at this point.
I stopped in a ristorante to exercise my Italian and ordered some pasta and wine. Once my raven-haired waitress got over the fact that she had an Italian-speaking dwarf in her establishment, I received excellent attention. The food and wine were superb. I finished, then asked directions to San Marino. She took me over to a window and pointed east.
Mount Titano was barely visible. I could make out San Marino's three castles sitting on the highest points of the mountain, silhouetted against the sky. It looked like something out of a Disney movie.
I turned away from the window and caught the waitress staring at me. She giggled nervously and dropped her eyes.
"I take it you don't get that many dwarfs around here," I said in Italian.
"I didn't mean to stare."
I introduced myself. Her name was Gabriela. I asked if I could use her phone, and she steered me into a back room. I got hold of an operator who informed me that the lines to San Marino were still out. I hung up and went back into the dining room, where Gabriela was waiting with a glass of cognac. I drank it in the name of international relations and thanked her. It tasted terrible.
"San Marinese," Gabriela said. "I thought you might like to taste it. They sell it by the gallon up there."
I disguised a belch with a noncommital grunt.
"Did you reach your party?"
"The phones up there are out of order."
Gabriela absently stroked her hair. "That's odd. Come to think of it, nobody's been down off the mountain in two or three days."
"Who usually comes down?"
"Many San Marinese work in Rimini. They often stop in here for lunch or dinner. I have regulars, but I haven't seen them for three days. I guess there may be something to the rumors."
"What rumors?"
"It is said they have sickness. They are keeping themselves isolated until they find out what it is and how to cure it."
"What kind of a police force do they have up there?"
"Oh, they're all very nice."
"That's great for public relations. How effective are they?"
She gave me a puzzled look. I rephrased the question. "How good are they at catching crooks?"
Gabriela laughed. "There is no crime in San Marino. Perhaps an occasional drunk or a traffic accident, but never anything serious. The San Marinese are very pleasant people. Very friendly. It will be a shame if you can't get in."