The clerk eyed us suspiciously while I signed the register. He brightened when I paid him in advance from the money I’d taken in the Happy Hour, which had turned out to be more than I’d expected, more than two hundred dollars. The old guy must have kept a whole week’s receipts stashed in the joint.
“Just leave your key in your room when you go in the morning, Mr. Hudson,” the clerk said as we left the office.
“All right. We will.”
Our room was way down at the end. There were only a few cars on the parking area; the place was practically deserted. So much the better, I figured, just in case my little wife decided on any funny stuff and I had to make some noise.
After the lock clicked on our unit, sealing us off from the outside, I relaxed. Everything had gone so easy, I felt like a little bragging.
“Worked just dandy!” I said, tossing my phony rod on a chair and twisting the cap off the bottle of whiskey.
Her eyes went to the gun.
“Don’t get no ideas.” I laughed. “That’s part of it. You won’t get nowhere if you try grabbin’ it.”
“Part of it? What do you mean?”
I chuckled some more. “Mean just what I said, babe. That’s a phony. It worked like a charm, but now I don’t need it no more, because when I’m finished with you I’m gonna tie you up anyway. And if you scream, I’ll just choke you with my bare hands. Get it?”
Strangely, she smiled. “You mean you haven’t even got a real gun?”
“Nope.” I was proud of myself. I took a long drag on the bottle, then blew out air. “Look what I’ve managed to pull off with nothin’ but a hunk of iron and guts,” I added when the whiskey stopped burning my throat enough so that I could speak again.
She laughed. I was surprised. I’d expected her to be disgusted with herself for being as fooled as everybody else. But she didn’t appear disgusted at all.
“Well, that’s fine, that makes everything very much easier,” she said. “I don’t need to wait until you’re not looking, now, do I?”
“Wait? Wait for what?” I muttered, starting toward her as I saw her hand go into her purse.
But I’d started far too late. A neat little .22 Minx Berratta suddenly came out of the purse and ended up pointed right at me.
“Hold it right there,” she said.
I did.
“That’s fine,” she continued. “Don’t do anything foolish and you won’t get hurt. I have nothing particularly against you, so if you’ll just empty your pockets of that money and push it over the bed to me, I’ll say good-by to you and let you go on and play your own game with the police.”
“The money! You want the money, and you’re not going to turn me in!”
“Of course I want the money. Why do you think I drove all the way out here at this hour? And no, I won’t turn you in. You’re nothing to me, except that you barged in when I was about to rob that poor old man you killed. But that’s a rap that’ll be hung on you and you alone, and I’ll have what I came for anyway.
“Now, let’s not waste any more time. The money, quickly, or I’ll put little holes all through you. The police will no doubt find you easily enough by morning, since you’re losing me, your cover, but I don’t think they’ll particularly want to find you like swiss cheese.”
They did, too, find me by morning. And they just laughed when I told them about the aftermath of the Happy Hour holdup — laughed as if they’d never heard anything so funny, and didn’t believe one word I said.
The Persuaders
by George F. Bellefontaine
He knew a lot, the gentle old professor. Too much to stay alive. One night, when there was no moon, men would...
The street was dark and in the distance Malcolm Stone could hear laughter, singing and the sharp crack of fireworks. He wondered what it was like to enjoy all that is Spain during the summer fiesta and then he concerned himself with the lighted window across the street. Beyond that window was the man he had trailed for three solid weeks — from West Germany to Switzerland; through France, across the border and finally to this small village forty kilometers south of Valencia.
It was the end of the line. The man had been in that room for two days now, and although it had been a difficult and tiring journey, Stone knew the toughest part was yet to come.
He sighed, straightened his wide shoulders and started across the narrow street, then up the stone steps, two flights, through an open door and down a long hall to the door at the far end. He tested the knob. It turned. He shoved hard and the door flew open.
“Professor Hermann Muntz, I presume.”
Malcolm closed the door behind him and then fixed his gaze on the professor, who was kneeling on the bed, edging his back closer to the wall until he could go no farther. He was a thin little man with white hair and a good start on a white beard. He didn’t look as though he were capable of discovering a new formula for a monstrous bomb, but be had.
Professor Muntz trembled as he said, “There must be some — some mistake. I am not Herr Muntz.”
“Come, come, Professor. I’ve been three steps behind you since you crossed the border from France.”
“Who... who are you?”
“Malcolm Stone.”
“You sound American.”
“I’m an agent, Professor. I have orders to take you back.”
“I do not believe you.”
“Very well,” Stone said. “Your name is Hermann Muntz, a professor of physics. Your wife died six years ago. Your son was killed when the Russians entered Berlin at the close of the war. You escaped to the West and taught at several universities until your colleagues coaxed you into scientific research.
“Up until three weeks ago you were working at the defence research laboratory in Stuxbourg. Then you left a brief note saying you were finished. After that you disappeared. Would you like to hear more about yourself?”
“No,” the professor said, his eyes lowered. “How did you find me so soon?”
“I’m an expert at my job, Professor. You’re an amateur when it comes to covering your trail. You didn’t even lock the door to this room.”
Malcolm Stone turned and slid the latch into place.
“I will not go back, Mr. Stone. Ever.”
“Do you mind?” Malcolm asked as he lowered his tired body into a chair facing the bed. He fished inside his jacket and produced a pack of cigarettes. He offered one to the old man, who declined, and then lit one for himself. “We can’t leave a man like you on the loose, Professor.”
“Please... please go away. Pretend you did not find me. I am sick of that world back there. I want to be a human, a simple man among simple people. Please go away, Mr. Stone.”
“I can’t. You were working on a theory, Professor, a formula for a bomb so powerful it makes the H-Bomb look like a firecracker. That’s why I can’t leave you on the loose. Surely you can understand what would happen if you fell into the wrong hands. They’d get the formula from you, by torture if necessary—”
“I destroyed the formula, along with all my notes.”
“It’s still in your brain, Professor. There are ways of extracting information from the brain. You’re a scientist: you should know that. If the wrong people possessed your bomb, they could force the rest of the world into submission under the threat of annihilation. As long as you’re roaming around, the free world can’t feel secure.”
“I belong to myself, not the free world.”
“When you developed that bomb, you no longer belonged to yourself.”
“I curse the bomb! It was wrong from the beginning, but I was disillusioned into thinking that freedom cannot exist unless it is backed with power. That is why I developed my theory. Then I saw it, a mass of figures on paper and I realized the suffering and death it could bring about. I had created it. Me, a man who could not harm a living creature.