“The Father Tand has given me three men to watch over me,” Carmody said.
“I apologize, Father, but you can’t go out now. Father Tand’s men can guard you, but I have authority over them.”
The phone rang, Piinal, closer to it, answered. A policeman’s face appeared. He said, “Windru reporting, sir. It’s about the Earthman, Gilson. He’s been found; he’s dead. In an alley near the Thrudhu Block. About ten minutes ago. Stabbed twice in the back and his throat cut.”
Carmody groaned, and he said,”Windru, has positive identification been made?”
Windru looked at his superior, and the largh said, “It’s all right. Speak.”
“Yes, Father. His papers were in his beltbag. His prints and photo checked.”
Piinal excused himself, saying that he had to make arrangements to deliver the body. Apparently, the ETS had an agreement with the Kareenan authorities to ship any of their dead agents back to Earth for burial. Carmody thought that Piinal was eager to use this as an excuse to keep from talking to him.
Angry, he put in another call to Tand, only to be told that he could not be reached. He began pacing back and forth across the room. It was very frustrating to have to remain closeted up; he wanted to do something.
He was certain that Lieftin was connected with Gilson’s death. Probably Abog was also guilty. But he could do nothing about it, nothing. And where was Lieftin? Wherever he was, he was working toward the accomplishment of his task: the murder of Yess.
Carmody became furious enough to curse the group of Earthmen, his own religionists, who had hired Lieftin. How strange that the disciples of Algul and the disciples of Christ had banded together!
The door-knocker clanged, muffled by the thick iron. Carmody shot the bolt and pushed one side of the door to let it swing out and so notify the policemen that they could enter. The door continued swinging, and two Kareenans stepped through. They had guns in their hands. Behind them, out in the hall, were two other males. They were beginning to drag in the bodies of the guards.
Carmody, his arms raised, backed up. While one man held a gun on him, the other went back into the hall to help the rest bring in the policemen. These were not dead, as Carmody had first thought. They were unconscious, sleeping as if drugged.
A Kareenan handed the priest a costume and mask. “Put them on.” Carmody obeyed.
“Are you working for Fratt?” he asked, but none of the five answered him.
After he had dressed himself and put on the mask, an antlered Ardour head, he was told to come with the others. They would be behind him. If he tried to run or call for help, he would be shot in the leg.
The Kareenans, also masked now, looking like any other group of merrymakers, took him to the end of the hall. There, they told him to walk up the steps. At the fifteenth floor, he was taken back down the hall to a room exactly above his. One of the group beat the knocker twice rapidly, and after a five-second pause, three times.
The door swung open, and a gun was stuck in Carmody’s back. There was nothing he could do but enter. He had not seen another guest or hotel employee in either hall.
The door was closed behind him, and the bolt shot home with a thud. The mask taken from his face, he could examine the room. It was furnished like his; the doors to the two other rooms of the suite were open.
By the stone table in the middle of the room stood Raphael Abdu. An aged Earthwoman sat beside the table. She wore clothes which had been in style thirty years ago, but there were certain features about them that had a colonial look. Carmody could not place their origin. The woman had long white hair plaited and coiled into a huge pile on top of her head. Her wrinkled face looked as if it had once been beautiful. Her eyes were concealed behind large hexagonal sunglasses.
“Are you absolutely sure it’s John Carmody?” she said to Abdu in non-Terrestrial English.
Impatiently, Abdu said, “Don’t be ridiculous! Do you want him to speak so you can recognize his voice?”
“Yes!”
“Speak up, Carmody,” Abdu growled. “Give us a few phrases from some of your sermons. The lady wants to hear you.”
“Ah, Fratt. I made a natural mistake,” Carmody said. “I assumed that you were a man. Obviously, you had a man dictate the letter for you.”
“That’s him!” she cried. “I haven’t forgotten that voice! Even after all these years!”
She placed a thick veined hand on Abdu’s.
“Pay the others off. Tell them to get lost.”
“Glad to,” Abdu said. He went into the room on Carmody’s right and returned immediately with a large bundle of Kareenan paper currency. He counted out each man’s share and waited while they checked the amount. Four left the suite, but one stayed behind. He stripped Carmody and taped his arms behind him. He sat Carmody down in one of the huge chairs and taped his ankles together. A rope from underneath his cloak was then used to bind the priest’s waist to the chair. Two more strips of tape went over Carmody’s shoulders and under his armpits to secure him to the back of the chair.
“His mouth?” the Kareenan said. Abdu translated into English for her.
“No,” the woman replied. “I can always shut him up if I want to. Just leave the tape on the table here.”
“I still don’t know who you are,” Carmody said.
“Your memory is too clogged with evil deeds,” she said. “But I haven’t forgotten. That’s the important thing.”
The Kareenan went through the door, and Abdu bolted it after him. There was silence for a while. Carmody studied her features. Suddenly, memory came swimming up from within.
She was the woman from whom he had gotten the layout of the fortress in which the Staronif Shootfire jewel was guarded.
He had gone to the colonial planet of Beulah to hide. Raspold and others had been hot on his trail on Springboard, but he had escaped. On Beulah, a planet settled largely by Englishmen and Scandinavians, he had played the part of a prospector. He had ignored the challenge of the Staronif jewel for a long time because he had been determined to stay out of trouble.
But when it looked as if Raspold had lost him, he established his assumed identity; he could no longer resist the temptation. His careful planning took four months, really not much time when the size of the job was considered. He had gathered a number of criminals, Lieftin among them. After assuring an escape by spaceship from Beulah, he had bribed one of the guards of the Staronif jewel, a considerable feat in itself; the guards were famous for their honesty. The guard was to open the doors for them, after having silenced the alarm mechanism. He had given them a plan of the rooms and of the warning devices installed in the vault where the Staronif was put at night.
But the demo who ruled one of the small states of Beulah had decided that things were too stagnant. He had discharged all the guards, hired new ones, and begun making alterations in the protective mechanisms and even in the internal construction of the building. Carmody had been afraid that the guard might start talking if he thought his usefulness was over and he would be cut out of his share. He had to be killed, and Carmody killed him.
The others in his group had wanted to give up the robbery, but Carmody had insisted they continue. Moreover, they were to stick to the schedule. After some investigation, he found that the demo’s secretary had not been discharged or transferred to another job. The rumor was that she was also the demo’s mistress; he could not bear to give her up. Carmody had entered the woman’s house the night before the robbery was to take place.
Mrs. Geraldine Fratt, as she called herself, was with a man—her son. He lived in another state and happened to be visiting his mother. When the mother proved resistant even to Carmody’s tortures, and when it looked as if she would die before revealing anything, he began to work on the son. She could not stand watching her son being cut apart, even though he had begged her not to talk because of him.