“No,” said Julia. “No, that can’t be. You were the first to come around. When the emergency squad came galloping to the rescue every single one of us was still out cold. We’ve been through that before. They saw us, saw every last one of us lying there like stranded fish and then gasping into life. Only you were moving.”
“Moving, yes,” said Nick. “Not playing possum, while maybe someone was. Because if I had been the accomplice down below I’d make damn sure I wouldn’t be seen moving until half a dozen other people were standing on their feet. Come on, let’s try out the other cage.”
The guards watched them impassively as they left the watchtower gantry and stepped into the cage last occupied by Valentina.
“What goes up must come down,” Nick said conversationally. “Elevators, as well as other things. And we know from our long look at the sublevel where this cage comes to rest. But let’s try it again, ourselves. Up first, though, for the look of things.”
They soared majestically up through the roof and then descended. This time they did not stop at main-floor level but went down into the lower depths. The cage door opened into a passageway lined with heavy steel doors. Each one of the rooms behind the doors had been carefully searched, and no one had been surprised that nothing had been found. Here were the maintenance shops, the power-control room with its rows of fuse boxes and switches, the storage areas for equipment and replacement parts. There were guards down there, Nick knew, but they were stationed out of sight along the access corridors. All the doors were customarily kept shut, as they were now. And all were locked when not in use.
“Yet, there are keys,” said Nick. “And at some point during our knockout period the cage could have come down here. With a little luck and plenty of good planning, someone might have been able to haul Valentina out of the cage and drag her into one of these rooms without being seen. Suppose she did go down instead of up? Think of it, Julia.”
“I’m thinking,” Julia said. “And what I’m thinking is that all those rooms have been searched and she isn’t there.”
“So it seems,” said Nick. “And yet Valentina recognized someone. Not Hughes, secluded in that watchtower cage. She didn’t see him. Someone on the floor, with us. In our immediate group. It was only chance — I think — and the way the group kept milling about that made it difficult for her to tell me who it was. Goddamn!” He was suddenly savagely angry. “I must have been out of my mind to let her get into that thing alone. Especially knowing that she’d seen someone. But which one was it? Who could it have been? Weston, Parry, Pauling, the president himself? They’ve all been here for years — I know their histories. Oh, what the hell. Let’s go on up again and have that war meeting in the president’s office. Maybe the search flights will have come up with something by now.”
He ushered Julia back into the cage and pressed the ground-floor button.
“You know something?” said Julia, with a faraway look in her catlike eyes. “I did notice one small thing that I’m beginning to think was rather strange. At the foot of the stairway there’s a bank of little cabinets with pull cords, and above them there’s a sign saying, GAS MASKS. When I came to I saw that one of them was slightly open, as if someone had tried to make a grab for it at the last minute. But nobody said anything about that. And so far as I could see, nobody was close enough to do it.”
“So far as you could see,” said Nick. “But you were out for the count of ten — ten minutes. Suppose someone had known enough to hold his breath… Now that’s very interesting. Which one of the cabinets was it?”
The cage had stopped on ground-floor level, and through the metal latticework they could see the little doors beneath the sign saying, GAS MASKS.
“The one on the right,” said Julia, staring. “I swear it was open before! I know it was.” But now they were all closed.
“Then someone’s been doing a little tidying up,” said Nick, “that maybe he didn’t have a chance to do before. And what in the hell is the matter with this godforsaken door?”
He punched the button marked OPEN. Nothing happened. Across the floor, through the openwork of the gantry, he could see Parry and Pauling and a pair of guards looking back at him.
Parry took a step toward the cage and called out — “Carter! Is something wrong?”
And then the vast machine room was plunged into an inky blackness.
Nick mouthed a sibilant curse and flung himself at the door. It rattled slightly at his onslaught, but it held firm.
“How positively charming,” Julia murmured dryly. “Just you and me together in the darkness — trapped in a rat cage with a murderer on the loose.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Somewhere There’s A Someone
It was like an encore for the first alarm, except that this scene played itself in a darkness that was absolute, at first, and then sliced by searching flashlights. A siren shrilled and guards thundered busily about the place, not knowing what to look for.
“Here, take this,” said Nick, and thrust his pencil flash at Julia. “Beam it at the lock and let’s get out of here.”
He slid the small pistol shape from its waistband holster and aimed it at the locking mechanism. The safety catch clicked off and the pistol spat — not bullets, but a narrow ray of white-hot light that bit deep into the metal.
“Heavens, what will they think of next?” Julia said admiringly. “A little pocket-sized acetylene torch, no less.”
“Laser beam,” Nick said briefly. “Keep clear of it.”
Metal sizzled indignantly as the beam ate through it. The lock smoldered briefly and disintegrated. Nick doused the lethal ray and kicked sharply at the door, and this time it swung obediently to one side.
“Get over to those guards with flashlights and stay with them,” he told Julia crisply. “I’m going downstairs.”
His long, loping strides took him rapidly through the flickering ceriness of the vast room to the ladderway leading to the sublevel passages. Light blazed suddenly into his face and someone caught him by the arm.
“There’s no need to race around like a madman, Carter,” Pauling said angrily. “The lights’ll be on in a minute, so for God’s sake stay where you are before you fall downstairs and break your neck. We’ve had enough trouble since you got here.”
“There’ll be more if you don’t get off my back,” Nick said rudely, thrusting him aside. Pauling yelped and staggered back. “And don’t set any of your guards onto me, either,” Nick added over his shoulder, seeing one of the guards lunge forward, “or I’m going to wonder about your motives. Get him back!”
“All right, all right, go then!” Pauling growled.
Nick was already starting down the stairs, the thin beam of his flash piercing into the gloom. He spiraled downward swiftly, and then doused his own light as he saw the pool of brightness below that was moving rapidly toward him.
“Halt!”
“Oh, not again!” Nick groaned. The guard with the lantern-shaped flash had a gun trained on him. “Look — I’m doing a job, too, and I’ve got to get to the power room — fast!”
“Oh, you, I know you, yeah,” the guard said ponderously. But I got my orders from the Chief. He’s in there himself and he told me nobody — but nobody — goes up or down these stairs or through these passages until he says so. He don’t trust nobody, and that includes you, understand? Sorry, fella. But you stay where you are.”
“I, too, am sorry,” Nick said graciously, “and what’s more I don’t trust nobody neither.” His smile in the circle of light was sweet and cooperative, but the axe blade of a hand that shot out and sledgehammcred against the guard’s bulky neck was anything but. The man dropped with a quiet little sigh and a heavy thud.