I mulled that over in my mind. Fred Haley was not a man given to wild accusations. At least he was no more paranoid than anybody else who has to live and/or work in New York.
"It wouldn't be the first time a former enemy had come to work in the United States," I said. "Often it works to our benefit, as in the case of Von Braun. He changed his name to keep people from rattling the skeletons in his closet. It's possible everything's on the up-and-up."
"Yes, it's possible. But since the good name of the university is involved, don't you feel it's worth some investigation?"
I said I thought it was. We discussed the mundane subject of fees and I told him I'd look into it.
I checked into my university office, did some paperwork, then locked up and headed across the campus toward Marten Hall, an older building which houses the Psychology Department.
It soon became apparent that one doesn't just walk in and strike up a conversation with a Nobel Prize winner; Smathers' security system would have shamed the nearest missile-tracking base. His first line of defense was his secretary, a 250-pound, hawk-faced woman who had somehow escaped the last pro football draft. The nameplate on her desk said Mrs. Pfatt. It really did.
She stopped torturing her typewriter long enough for me to introduce myself as one of Smathers' university colleagues, a criminologist who wanted to consult with Dr. Smathers on a question of criminal psychology, if you please.
I was told Dr. Smathers had no time for consultations. The typewriter groaned and clacked.
"In that case, perhaps I could speak with Dr. Kee."
I was told Dr. Kee had no time for consultations.
I left Mrs. Pfatt and walked down a long corridor lined on both sides with classrooms. A few undergraduate classes were in session, filled with sleepy-looking freshmen. Everything looked distressingly in order. Most of the students in the building recognized me and waved. I smiled and waved back.
Marten Hall has four floors, and I assumed Smathers had his private offices and research labs on the top one. I worked my way up the floors as casually as possible. The third floor was mostly offices and laboratories sparsely populated on a Saturday morning with a few graduate researchers. I headed toward the stairway at the end of the corridor, stopped and stared. Somebody had installed a heavy steel door across the entrance to the stairs. NO ADMITTANCE-AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY was stenciled in red paint across the door.
Less money should have been spent on material and more on the lock; I got out my set of skeleton keys and hit on the third try. I pushed the door open. A narrow flight of stairs snaked up and twisted to the left, out of sight. I was beginning to understand where much of the first year's $100,000 had gone; the inside of the door, as well as the walls and ceiling of the staircase, had been soundproofed. It seemed a curious expense for a Psychology Department; mental processes just don't make that much noise.
I climbed the stairs and found myself at the end of a long corridor, expensively refinished with glassed-in offices on one side and closed doors on the other. I pushed one of the doors and it swung open. I stepped in, closed the door behind me and turned on the lights.
It was a laboratory, large, heavily soundproofed. There was an array of monitoring machines, computers and other sophisticated equipment lined up against the walls. All had wires leading to a large, water-filled tank in one corner of the lab. The tank looked like an aquarium designed to hold a baby whale. It was at least ten feet long, three feet wide and four feet deep. Electrode nodes were built into the glass walls of the tank, along with black rubber straps that now floated on the surface.
I poked around the machines for a while, but couldn't figure out what they were supposed to do. I turned off the lights, went out of the lab and walked quietly down the corridor, glancing in the other rooms with the closed doors. They were all labs, similar to the one in which I had been. The offices on my left were all empty-except for the last one.
The Chinese caught me out of the corner of his eye. He was the original Captain Flash, out of his chair and standing in front of me in a lot less time than it would have taken Superman to find a phone booth. I should have listened to Barnum's sermonette on first impressions; the man in front of me looked like a refugee from some tong war. Somebody had tried to use his head as a whetstone; the whole right side of his face was a sheet of white, rippled scar tissue. The right eye was stitched shut, unseeing, but the other eye was perfectly good, and it was obvious that he had all the moves. He was crouched now, perfectly balanced on the balls of his feet, his calloused hands rigid and extended in front of him like knife blades.
I smiled and gave him a cheery good morning. He must have taken it as a Chinese insult, or maybe he just didn't like dwarfs. He grabbed my right shoulder and threw me over his hip. I bounced off the wall and fell to the floor, where I stayed, eyes half-closed, watching him. He came forward in the same crouch, his hands in front of him. This guy could kill.
I waited until he was just above me, then snapped my left leg out, catching him on the side of the knee with the instep of my shoe. The joint snapped. His eyes flecked with pain and he toppled backward. He didn't stay down for long. Somehow he managed to get up on his one good leg and, dragging the smashed one behind him, he came toward me.
The karate had surprised him, but that was finished. I had a black belt, but so, obviously, did he. This time he meant to kill.
His arm darted out like a snake's tongue, the deadly knuckle of his middle finger aiming for my forehead. An ear-splitting scream deafened me as I ducked. The missile that was his hand went over my head and smashed into the wall behind me. I came up with my head into his solar plexus. He grunted as he rose into the air, then screamed when he came down on the bad leg. He crumpled over on his side.
The man was finished, staring up at me with hatred and unspeakable pain forming a second skin over his eye. I suddenly felt sick to my stomach. I went back down the stairs and headed for my office.
It didn't take Smathers long to get there. He burst through the office door, long brown hair flowing behind him, his face the color of chalk. He barely managed to bring himself to a halt in front of my desk. He stood there, trembling with rage, literally speechless. A tall, thin man with pale, exhausted eyes, he leaned on the desk and finally managed to speak.
"What were you doing in my private laboratories?"
"I got lost looking for the men's room."
Smathers' rage was probably more justified than my sarcasm, but he looked fairly ridiculous. His tongue worked its way back and forth across his lips. "You, sir, are a liar!"
"Okay, Dr. Smathers," I said testily. "The reason is quite simple. I was looking for you or Dr. Kee. I wanted to consult on a professional matter."
"My secretary told you that neither Dr. Kee nor I have time for such matters."
"I don't like doing business through other people's secretaries."
"The door to the laboratories was locked!"
"Not when I got there, it wasn't," 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 that that man may never walk properly again?"
"He was trying to kill me. If you or your associates want to press charges, go ahead. We'll take it up with the president. Barnum might like to find out what's so important to you that you feel the need to keep it locked behind two inches of steel."