He was crying and wailing and threshing about, beating his fists on the ledge. I knew this would be his effort to refuse. I was ready for it.
I took a small viewer from my pocket. I set it up. I held his head so he would have to look at it.
The whole sex scene ran off. It ended with the kiss and the classic remark he had been made to make by post-hypnotic suggestion. "Oh, you are ever so much better than Endow!" We psychologists know our business.
"Endow will kill me! He'll imprison me for life! With maniacs!"
"Precisely," I said. Yes, indeed, we psychologists know our business. "And if those three people on Voltar aren't dead and if the two named do not arrive with Odur, these strips go straight to Endow! Understood?"
When I got him conscious again, he understood.
After, with some trouble, I had made him rehearse it over and over, he had fainted one more time. His heart palpitations had been getting worse. I couldn't think of any other way to torture him at the moment, so I left.
It was a masterly stroke!
Heller had asked for a cellologist. Crobe had been aching to ruin anybody as good-looking as Heller. So I would give him Crobe.
The Countess Krak was wearing those two forgeries on her body. When she arrived, I would simply pluck them off with suitable guise.
The Countess Krak would rave at Heller and upset him so for living in a whorehouse that he would never get anything done. She would slow him to a walk and maybe, as I had told Lombar, she would kill Heller. Lombar would listen to my needing a hit woman.
And when I finished off Heller, however it was done, there would be no Countess Krak waiting to take revenge at the other end. I would see to it that she never left Earth once here.
All witnesses dead. The forgeries of the Emperor's name safely in my hands. Really a masterly stroke!
I knew that Earth psychology had not failed me and the use of FBI evidence-gathering, frame-up know-how had been flawlessly executed.
I went to bed comfortable for the first time in many, many days.
For some reason, possibly understandable, I wanted to see the Blixo unquestionably gone. Other ships come and go but the Blixo apparently had its own brand of cargo—bad news. Accordingly, when I awoke from my well-earned sleep, I tackled two hundred pounds of papers that had to be stamped. Captain Bolz could take them away, thank you.
It was too much to ask of one to read them so I sat in my office and stamped away. My arm got tired. How, in just ten days, could Bawtch accumulate so much paper to be stamped? But, oh well, he was cared for. In another few weeks they would give him a nonmilitary funeral– probably the coffin would be carried between two lines of clerks making an arch with pens, and his tombstone would read STAMP HERE.
I tried to tie the identoplate to my foot but my back got tired bending over to change the sheets. I toyed with the idea of going out and finding a blind beggar to do the stamping—but they whine so and I had had my fill of whining lately.
It was ten o'clock in the evening when I finished. I got a dolly and pushed the papers down the tunnel from my office and into the hangar. A couple of hangar men loaded them into the ship.
Bolz had a terrible hangover, fortunately, and there was no social chitchat. He had encased Too-Too in irons and locked him into a strongroom to which there was only one key. He had made sure the cartoned balls of opium were lashed down, the heroin bags wouldn't leak or roll about and that the cases upon cases of I. G. Barben speed wouldn't crush at high acceleration. He gave me a wincing farewell—I shook his hand too hard (I was so glad to see him go)—and went to his flight deck. The trundle dolly rolled. The airlocks clanged shut. The Blixo lifted its skinny, battered length up through the mountaintop illusion and was gone into the dark night. Six weeks from now it would, I hope, land uneventfully on Voltar and my main troubles would be solved.
Exhausted from my stamping labors, I went back to bed and slept the sleep of the cunning and the just.
It was almost ten o'clock the next morning when I got around, much refreshed. I lolled over breakfast in my room, and when the waiter had gone, I decided to take a turn in the yard.
I was expecting nothing. My mood was optimistic. As I looked up from the patio at the open sky above, I could see that it was a fine autumn day.
The door from the patio to the yard was shut. It had a small port in it—the Romans were cautious people. More from habit than from fear, I glanced through the small port before I opened the yard door.
I froze!
Sitting on the grass! Sitting on the grass, tossing an object into the air and catching it! Sitting on the grass was GUNSALMO SILVA!
I flinched back!
My world went topsy-turvy!
What was HE doing there? HE was supposed to be DEAD!
I peeked cautiously. He had not seen me. He was
just sitting there tossing whatever it was. But what was it? It was about fourteen inches long, it was narrow, it was black.
A sawed-off shotgun! I think they are called a "leopard" by U.S. gangsters. They saw off the barrel and they saw off the stock and it leaves a sort of pistol. But what an awful pistol! A double-barrelled, twelve-gauge smoothbore! It could blow a hole in a man a dog could jump through and do it twice!
What was he doing here?
Only one conclusion could be reached. He knew I had put the finger on him and he had come here to kill me!
I abandoned all thought of going for a walk!
Silently I withdrew to my room.
I closed and double-barred my bedroom door.
I opened the passage to Faht's office and went tearing down it as fast as I could run.
Somewhat out of breath, I burst in upon Faht.
"There's a man in my front yard!" I said without preamble.
Faht Bey was going over some accounts. He looked up tiredly. "Probably it's part of this mess with the American consul." He saw I didn't understand. "The shooting," he explained. "The one you got the alibi for. Things were very calm here before you arrived."
"What American consul?" I shouted at him.
"Don't you know about American consuls? They got two main duties. One of them is to claim the bodies of dead Americans. The other is to protect live Americans from justice and make sure they get thrown in any foreign jail that's handy. And of course, there's the other secret duty of running the CIA."
"What's going on?" I screamed at him.
"There's no use to pretend you don't know," he said.
"Couple of days ago, there was a shooting in a local rooming house. A guy named Jimmy 'The Gutter' Tavilnasty went into a room and got shot to pieces. A man named Gunsalmo Silva was arrested. He's been on our lines, Gris. He came in on the Blixo and you know it. You ordered us to deliver him to that rooming house and we did. And he killed this Tavilnasty."
"What happened?" I pleaded.
"The police arrested this Silva and threw him in the jug. The American consul from Ankara came in here to claim the body and ship it home and Silva heard there was an American consul in town and he insisted on seeing him, claiming to be an American citizen. We got scared they would take Silva and maybe interrogate him but that didn't happen. The American consul verified Silva was an American citizen, so of course they demanded the court put him in prison on bread and water. But the local police said it was self-defense and they let Silva go. They don't like foreign interference. The consul was awfully mad at the lack of international cooperation but he left on the morning plane with the body of Tavilnasty. Now do you understand?" He didn't really want to know. "If the man on your front lawn is squat, very muscular, black hair, black eyes, swarthy complexion, then that's Gunsalmo Silva. But it's all handled." He fixed a beady eye on me. "How is it there always seems to be trouble where you've been and how come you always show up later when everything is handled?"