"Please tell me," begged Heller.
"Well, in short, sailor, I told them that if you approved it, they could have 100 percent of the profits of the whole corporation and all its holdings, after expenses, until all their back wages, withholding tax and pension fund was caught up. After that, you said they could only have 60 percent. However, that won't be for a long, long time."
Heller sat down suddenly in a chair. And well he might! For, to all intents and purposes, so far as income for an owner was concerned, Atlantic City again had just changed hands!
THE WHOLE ENTERPRISE HAD BEEN TAKEN OVER BY THE STAFF!
Mamie went on. "But I need an opinion from you on something very important."
Breathlessly, he said, "What?"
Mamie said, persuasively, "Don't you think I should order my name put up in lights on each casino-hotel? Real big: 'Mamie Boomp, President and General Manager.' How do you think that would go over?"
Very faintly, Heller said, "Wonderful." Then after a little he turned to Countess Krak, "Dear, I think it's time we went back to New York."
Oh, did I guffaw! Heller's venture to get Izzy out of debt had made exactly no progress at all! It had only brought more trouble. Moreover, he was now discouraged and of very low morale.
I decided then and there to stop worrying about him and let him sink. There was no slightest sign that he would do anything productive or active, and when the word came from Lombar, he and the Countess Krak would still be in the U. S. floundering around. They didn't have a prayer of completing before I could get the word and kill them both!
My euphoria revved right up to top-peak. It was I who was winning. Me, me, me!
The next morning my beauty sleep was shattered by a shrieking sizzle at my bedside. It interrupted a beautiful dream: Heller and Krak were in a bread line in New York and a Manco Devil was standing there with a soup ladle, not only refusing them food but also banging them expertly over the head with the sharp edge.
The shrieking sizzle was the intercom. It was quite unusual for it to buzz, for Faht Bey never wanted any help from me if he could possibly escape it. So it must be an emergency.
I pushed the button.
It was!
Faht Bey said, "Come to the hangar quick! They're killing Doctor Crobe!"
I would have said, so what, why are you calling me? But he had closed the line.
It occurred to me that I should not be careless. Life is full of chances. I had learned from Bury to always have an alternate solution in case something went wrong. I might need Crobe in the event that Heller and Krak muddled through.
I got into some clothes. I armed myself very heavily. I went down the tunnel to the hangar to give Faht a piece of my mind. Things had changed and he had better find out about it.
He was waiting for me at the hangar end.
"Since when," I asked him acidly, "am I responsible for everyone on this base?"
"You sent for him!" said Faht Bey. "You had him brought from Voltar. And now look!"
Crobe was halfway up the hangar wall, hanging by his fingernails.
On the hangar floor, fifty feet below him, were the four assassin pilots and the five Antimancos. And they were furious!
They were yelling curse words up at Doctor Crobe, the like of which I had never heard before. Unprintable! An awful din!
"I won't let them shoot at him. He's only two feet away from an earthquake stability box," said Faht. "They might hit it and cave the whole place in."
True enough: the small box which kept an invisible bar beam going to brace two walls apart was right by his head.
I didn't want to go near the assassin pilots: they are pretty dangerous people to be around even when they're calm. And right then they were definitely not calm. They were howling and jumping up and down.
Faht Bey's hand pushing against my back propelled me into the scene.
"What's this?" I said.
A stream of vituperation sprayed at me from all sides. Only with difficulty could I piece together what had happened.
Doctor Crobe had lifted the detention cell key off the guard. Sometime during the night he had crept out of the cell where he should have been studying English. An assassin pilot had awakened at the cut of a guard bayonet and had the bleeding slash to prove it.
Good Gods, Doctor Crobe sure did not have very good sense, to attack an assassin pilot!
Ploddingly, plugging away, I kept asking them if Crobe had volunteered any slightest explanation for this breach of good manners. Perhaps if I could get to the bottom of this, it could be handled.
No one at ground level had the necessary information. In fact, they were making such a din, I doubt they understood my line of interrogation.
There was only one thing for it, I realized in a spurt of genius: ask Doctor Crobe.
I got a small bullhorn and focused it on him. "Why were you cutting on an assassin pilot?" I shouted up at him.
He had hold of the beam box itself now. He looked down with his wild, zealot eyes. His voice, coming from way up there on the wall, was pretty thin.
"I was just studying English!" he shouted down in his clumsy Voltarian. "I was only doing what you told me to do, Officer Gris."
That caused more smoke and profanity down where I was. Hastily, I yelled back, "I didn't tell you to cut anybody's throat!"
"You gave me texts on psychology and psychiatry as part of my reading assignment! They say man has a reptile brain in the lower middle of his skull. That was news to me, and I was only trying to find out! Why all this furor over somebody just trying to do his homework?"
Well, he had a point. The assassin pilots and the Antimancos didn't see it that way.
"You gave him some books that told him to do that?" snarled an assassin pilot.
I thought it prudent to change the subject. "If we can get him down from there, he can show you it is just a clinical matter."
They surged at me. I got my back to the wall and a blastick out. "Look," I said, "why don't you go someplace and have a conference and cool off. I'll get him down and we can discuss it like gentlemen."
They looked at the 800-kilovolt blastick. They looked up at Crobe.
"Later," said the assassin pilot.
They left, snarling considerably, leaving me and Faht Bey.
I yelled up at Crobe, "You can come down now."
"I can't. I am certain I will fall," he yelled back.
"We'll rig a safety net!" I yelled. "Hold on."
The hangar crew had been very inconspicuous during the argument. Faht Bey dug them out from behind things and made them get a net. They stretched it out below Crobe.
"You can jump now," I yelled up at him.
"My hands won't let go!" he yelled back.
I told Faht Bey and the hangar crew to wait right there. I went up the tunnel to my gun case. I selected out a needle stun rifle and came back.
Faht Bey took one look at it. "Don't shoot up there! You could hit that electronic-beam support box he's holding on to."
I told him icily, "You are questioning my marksmanship. I can hit a songbird at half a mile with this. How can I miss Crobe at fifty feet?"
I put the stun rifle on its lowest setting. The hangar crew around the safety net covered up their heads. Faht Bey ran all the way to the office and peeked back out.
Kneeling, I braced the weapon.
I took perfectly accurate aim. Right on Crobe's right hand as it clutched the box.
I fired!
CRASH!
The box exploded!
Down came Crobe!
Down came ten tons of rock!
Smoke and dust spiralled in the gloom.
Faht Bey hit the clanging general emergency alarm button.
DEAFENING!
From all over the base people came streaming in to man the guns.
Faht Bey quickly redirected them into an emergency damage and rescue operation.