Back on his own floor, he peered cautiously around the corner before emerging from the stairway. His room door was open, but there was no one in the corridor. He heard nothing. He darted out and up the ascending staircase.
The roof was silent and deserted under the stars, glowing at his feet in a wash of light from the tubes that outlined the roof. Traffic went by inaudibly, high overhead in the dark sky.
He saw the yellow riding lights of an unoccupied cab, not directly above, but bearing a little to one side. He took out his flashlight and blinked at it, trying hard to get the aim right; it was a long distance and a difficult angle.
The ’copter did not turn. It kept its course and disappeared finally down toward the Eiffel Tower.
He heard a sound down the stairwell. It was an ambiguous, uncomfortable sort of sound. He listened, but it was not repeated.
He walked quietly behind the stair entrance and tried again. Another empty cab was approaching, no nearer than the first. He aimed the flashlight tube at it, blinked it rapidly on and off.
After a heart-stopping moment, the cab turned toward him. And then he heard stealthy sounds in the stairwell. He listened. Footsteps, coming up.
He glanced at the oncoming cab. Too late; too far away. He went quickly to the nearest parapet, and holding the tiny flashlight like a dagger, stabbed it at the glow tube. Glass tinkled and fell, and the light died along that edge of the roof. The corner was only a few steps away; he broke the next tube as well. Now the roof was lighted only on the two sides farthest from him, and the, stair entrance cast a long, deep shadow.
He heard them step out onto the roof. They must have had a third man waiting in the car downstairs, George thought; when they learned that he had not appeared down there, they had turned back to search upstairs.
The cab had turned away, now that the signal had stopped and the edge-lights gone out. George watched its tiny lights dwindle.
The footsteps came toward him, slowly, one pair on either side of the entrance. Two beams of light shot out, illuminating all the roof except the rear wall of the entranceway where he stood.
“You had better surrender, monsieur,” said a voice. “Otherwise we are obliged to shoot.”
George pressed himself thin against the wall and tried to breathe quietly. The voice had come from the right; that was the spokesman, the stocky man with the gun. Therefore, he guessed, the other would step out first. He moved silently to the left, raised his arm and waited.
The tall man stepped suddenly into view, swinging his flash around. George brought the edge of his palm down with all his strength, aiming for the man’s wrist, but hitting the flashlight instead. Pain rolled up his arm as the metal tube fell; then, blinded by the light that had shone in his eyes, he was struggling with the tall S. P. man. He struck out furiously, feeling a blow in return that numbed his side, and then the two of them toppled to the roof.
George struck the other man once more, felt the grip loosen, and scrambled desperately to his feet. As he started to turn, a crushing pain struck him at the base of his skull. He saw the roofs surface rising toward him, but felt nothing when it hit him.
VI
He was in a ‘copter with a rope ladder dangling from it, hovering just over the bedroom window of Luther’s apartment Art was inside, but he wouldn’t climb out onto the ladder. George was about to pull the ladder up and tie a wrench to it when Art’s red, wild-eyed face appeared.
Hurry, hurry! Art was climbing up the ladder, and now the window next door opened and a man was leaning out, with a gun in his hand.
George was paralyzed with fear. He saw the man fire, and when he looked down, Art’s face was white and a thin spray of blood was whipping away from his body in the wind of the rotors.
He’s hit, George thought. He’ll fall.
George tilted the ’copter downward, toward the canal, but he was too late. Art fell, and the blue water of the canal turned red …
No, that was silly. All that was over and done With; they had come out of that all right. It was the Beaux Arts Ball that he had to worry about. His voice was bellowing out of the concealed playback machine, and everyone was turning to stare at him. He looked down, and saw that his witch-doctor’s robe was gone. He was standing there in the devil suit.
All the others were shouting, “There he is! He’s the one!
He ran, but the crowd got in his way; he couldn’t move fast enough. And just behind him was the stocky man with the gun. He couldn’t get away, death was behind him, the gun-barrel rising, the finger tightening on the trigger—
Ugh!
He sat up, looking uncomprehendingly at the strange patterns of light and shadow around him. His head hurt, and he couldn’t raise his hands. Someone flashed a light in his eyes. Dazzled, he said, “What—who are you? What are you doing?”
A voice said, “Bien” Someone got up from beside his cot, and two men, one in a white jacket, left the room. He could see them briefly in the light of the corridor outside. Another man, in a guard’s uniform, shut the barred door with a clang, and went away.
There was an interval long enough for him to come fully awake, and discover that his wrists were manacled to the sides of the cot. Then two guards appeared at the door, unlocked it and entered. One of them removed the manacles and helped him to his feet. He tried to throw off the man’s arm, but found that he was too weak; too weak, in fact, to stand by himself.
They led him along the corridor and into a small, brightly lit room where there was a heavy chair, bolted to the floor. They sat him in it and strapped his wrists down.
A white-jacketed man at the side of the room was removing a hypodermic from a sterilizer. He turned, fitted the needle to the transparent shaft, depressed the plunger and thrust the needle through the covering membrane of a bottle. He stepped toward George.
George gripped the arms of the chair, remembering what Art had told him about truth serums. “They’re not infallible. If you have a strong, balanced personality, and if you think up a good cover story and stick to it, truth serums won’t make you tell the truth.
I was at the ball, he thought rapidly, but I had nothing to do with the plot. I haven’t seen Luther, Art or Morey since that party at Luther’s. I don’t know where they are. I don’t know where they are. I ran from the police because I seduced a woman at the ball, and her boyfriend was angry with me. I was afraid he had made trouble for me with the police. That’s not good, but it will have to do.
He felt the coolness of evaporating alcohol on his arm, then the cold stab of the needle. I was at the ball, he told himself, but I had nothing to do with the plot. I haven’t seen Luther, Art, or Morey …or Luther, or Morey…
He was beginning to feel drowsy. The words tripped over each other in his head, became hopelessly jumbled.
There was a timeless, drowsy interval; then he became aware that a hot rubber sheath was being removed from his arm. His body was stiff, and his hands and feet were numb.
He opened his eyes. The white-jacketed man was stuffing something that clicked into an oblong box. He stowed the box away in a clip at the side of a massive instrument board on wheels, and an attendant pushed it out of the room.
The man looked at George, flexing the fingers of one hand in the palm of the other. “You gave us a hard time,” he said. “But you talked.”